I certainly enjoyed reading this murder mystery by John Ballem, from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, which is centered in an artistic environment. It's very comprehensive and concise, follows a straight-ahead sequence of events and contains sufficiently in-depth and interesting characterizations to keep the story flowing smoothly and the reader in suspense.
Localed in an art colony above Banff, with the majestic inspiration of the Canadian Rockies serving as a backdrop, the normally tranquil atmosphere is geared more towards creativity than destruction. Then two people get killed, a bizarre performance artist starts acting even more bizarrely, and, as usually happens in the middle of a catastrophe, notwithstanding the conducive surroundings, a romantic relationship develops. With the usual rivalries that go on among people in the arts world (including writers and musicians, as well as painters and actors), there is an ample supply of suspects to go through.
A recurring theme in the novel was "revelations" - biblical, artistic and investigative. One revelation for me was that an artist's work has "a value and an existence of its own, entirely apart from the [artist as a] person", which would explain why I still love and admire certain pieces of music by people whose "offstage" personalities I find totally abhorrent. On the other hand, I found it incredible that a woman otherwise lacking in vanity would consciously stop and make the effort of applying lipstick before going to report a killer who, moments before, had tried to kill her!
I was particularly struck by the author's personalization of Marek, a romantically duplicitous music composer, who "stored women until he needed them, like some species of spider that wrapped their victims in a silken shroud and hung them up in the web until they were ready to be sucked dry."
Award-winning author John Ballem, also a Queen's Counsel and international authority on oil and gas law, has written several short stories and poems, and this is his eleventh novel, following the Caribbean voodoo thriller, Manchineel. |
