The ninth in this crime series has geographic stretch, from its base in Grand Bank across the North American continent. “A Perfect Storm” opens with Eddie Tizzard, formerly with the RCMP Grand Bank detachment, now entering his hotel room in Las Vegas.
Without spoiling too much of former installments, Tizzard has left the Mounties, following a violent assault on him by a suspect, as well as an altercation instigated by him, against a superior (in rank only) officer. Now he’s thinking of turning to private investigation, and his Las Vegas sojourn is in pursuit of relevant training and a certificate.
A plan which becomes derailed two sentences into the book. By then Tizzard has entered his hotel room, turned on the light, uttered “Holy jumpins,” and beheld “thousands of dollars strewn around like confetti” along with “a very red, very large bloodstain,” both of which appear linked to “a man in a suit lying face down in the bathroom with a visible hole in the back of his head.”
In short order he’s in an interview room, seated across from LVPD Detective Julio Sanchez, who seeks Tizzard’s full co-operation (on a number of different levels). Tizzard knows that his protestations of innocence will chime louder if he can establish his bona fides, and that means a phone call to his old boss, Sgt. Winston Windflower. But his first phone call to the Grand Bank office goes to voicemail. Various duties and ailments have its staff and officers elsewhere, and Windflower had fallen into a crisis of his own. Tracking down a report of children playing near an abandoned silver mine shaft, he’s plummeted through a rotten wooden floor, broken at least one bone, and is trying to recall who, if anyone, actually knows where he is.
His wife, though, will certainly notice he’s missing. Sheila Hillier is also now the mayor of Grand Bank, a position she ran for “to improve the town’s economy. And she had succeeded, mostly.” Now she’s a few weeks away from an election which will bring someone else to her seat on the council, while she sets her sights on studying for an MBA. Not that her days aren’t already full, with 20-month-old Amelia Louise full of spirit and play and demands for attention. Sheila swings by The Mug-Up, the cafe she used to own (but had sold after she was badly injured in a car accident), to gather her daughter from her trusted babysitters. She expects to hear from her husband any minute now, because “he’ll want to know what was on for dinner.” At home, she takes some halibut steaks from the freezer to thaw.
Back in Las Vegas, Tizzard is informed that the dead man is, unexpectedly, also from Newfoundland.
Not only that, but murder victim Martin Spurrell had Tizzard’s name written on a note found in his pocket. Tizzard is mystified, but ensuing events quickly suggest a possible link to one Paul Spurrell, currently in police custody back in Marystown. If only they could get a hold of Windflower and clear all this up …
Author Mike Martin has steadily been staffing the Grand Bank office — alongside the reliable and organized Betsy are Const. Rick Smithson, resident tech geek/wizard, and officers Yvette Jones and Carrie Evanchuk. Each has a role to play as the scope of the case quickly expands, not just from Pacific to Atlantic coast, but drilling through layers of crime. Money plus execution equals drugs, which means trafficking of same. The selection on offer is skewing strongly towards crystal meth, inexpensive to manufacture and transportable, and now in the realm of bikers. Never good news, but these gangs bring an ideology as poisonous as their product: white supremacy, racism, and Aryanism.
And there’s that approaching storm …
So, much drama. But this is also a book with a domestic heart, and delicious home cuisine is savoured.
“Sheila … prepped the halibut by sprinkling it with black pepper and sea salt and covering it with a mixture of melted butter, garlic, lemon juice and basil. She put it in a baking pan and tucked it into the fridge. Next up were the roast potatoes. She peeled her potatoes, cut them in half and tossed them in olive oil, some salt and a heavy hand of black pepper …”
This shift between spheres is reinforced by alternating perspectives, neatly compacted and merged into a tight plotline.
Joan Sullivan is editor of Newfoundland Quarterly magazine. She reviews both fiction and non-fiction for The Telegram.
