Buffalo Jump is a great debut novel from Montreal-born Torontonian Shrier, and it introduces PI Jonah Geller in what is certainly going to be a fine series. The plot is tight, the characters engaging, and this one even has a believable – and sympathetic – bad guy.
The story opens with Geller, a consultant with Beacon Security in Toronto, having a really bad day. First, there’s the nightmare that kept him up all night. Also, his arm isn’t completely healed from the bullet that went through it during a job that he screwed up royally. His car won’t start and, on the TTC ride to Beacon, he’s accosted by an anti-Semitic bully. All that before 8:30 a.m.
This is a clever background for a complex character, one about to be hired on a unique job. That evening, as Geller returns to his apartment, a contract killer named Dante Ryan is waiting. Ryan has been hired to kill a pharmacist. But the unknown person who hired him also wants him to take out the pharmacist’s wife and five-year-old son. It seems even a hired killer has scruples. Ryan wants Geller to get him the information he needs to get the deal cancelled.
This clever device leads Geller into the crime world of Toronto’s Golden Horseshoe, down to depressed Buffalo and back. It also opens up the festering wound of his failure in what Beacon Security calls The Tobacco Debacle, where Geller was shot. This is a terrific opening to what is sure to become a solid series. — Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail
