For Howard Shrier, it’s fourth-time lucky with his latest Jonah Geller case, Miss Montreal (Vintage, 288 pages, $20).
Not that the Toronto journo hasn’t had his share of good fortune—his scrappy, Jewish, homegrown PI’s 2008 debut, Buffalo Jump, won the Crime Writers of Canada award for best first novel, while the sequel, High Chicago, was named 2009’s best Canadian crime novel. Last year’s Boston Cream was also well-received.
Although the churlish might have once regarded these accolades as premature, excessive or a tad parochial, such caveats hold no merit now. This time, Shrier has built his own luck with a more compelling tale, more cohesively told, with admirable pacing, richer characterization and solid editing.
Perhaps it’s a case of repatriating the series. The first three books were consecutively set in Buffalo, Chicago and Boston, perhaps to encourage U.S. sales. This one takes Geller and his gun-toting pal, Dante Ryan, to Shrier’s native Montreal on a hunt for the murderer of an acclaimed local newspaper columnist, once a childhood friend.
It’s a change vastly for the better. That city’s hectic vibrancy, ethnic tensions and political shenanigans are well-captured and should translate exotically south of the border.
Still, it’s Geller’s perilous and hilarious exploits with ex-contract killer Ryan (surely one of the more inventive rich crime-lit pairings) that muscles this tale along. The explosive Ryan’s near-homicidal struggle with the city’s traffic mayhem is, alone, worth the price of admission.
But, beyond all else, this is a tale of tragic love and fateful choices: Serendipity, the path untaken, lost opportunities—call it what you will—that spawn multi-generational hatreds.
Go, discover Geller. Because Shrier is in hot pursuit of a best-novel three-peat. — John Sullivan, Winnipeg Free Press
