Review of A PECULIAR CASE by Ginette Guy Mayer

 2 Stars

I’ve been reading the Paradise Café mystery series because Maureen Jennings was the featured author of SD&G Reads, a library program in my area which encourages all residents across Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry counties to read the same title before coming together for an evening with the author.  This series, set in the 1930s in Toronto, features a female private investigator.  Then I learned that there is a local author, Ginette Guy Mayer, who has also written a series of mysteries featuring a female investigator; the three books are also set in the 1930s but in Cornwall, Ontario.

Elizabeth Grant is a middle-aged widow who has opened a private investigations firm using a male persona, François Lefebvre.  She is hired by Albert Drew, a customs officer from Morrisburg, to find Josephine Smith, an antiquarian.  Drew gave her a rare book, a 1548 prayer book which purportedly belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, to determine its value.  Smith has been making excuses for not returning the book and Drew fears she has absconded with it.  Elizabeth agrees to take the case which ends up having links to the Fenians, a secret society of Irish patriots. 

From the beginning, I had difficulty with the premise.  In the prologue, the reader learns that Drew basically stole the book; he tells his friend Ernest Lawson that, “’I am cooked if caught.’”  A private investigator would be hired by a thief to track down an item he stole?  Lawson is a lawyer who is supposedly helping Drew, though the nature of his help is never clarified.  He, also in danger of being found out, agrees to the hiring of a P.I.? 

There are other events that have scant regard for credibility.  Smith is missing and then just appears so Elizabeth can follow her?  Elizabeth conveniently finds a bill of lading in a wastebasket when that piece of paper would have been needed by the owner?  Sometimes things are mentioned that are irrelevant but seem thrown in to confuse.  For instance, what is the purpose of the “discarded draft of a letter . . . asking for boxes to be shipped back to Cornwall’?  Other cases are added to the narrative for little apparent reason; these are left to Elizabeth’s nephew to investigate.  But it’s annoying when these cases are just dropped:  a question asked about a case on page 47 is never answered, even when the case is closed on page 51. 

I found myself confused more than once.  One minute Elizabeth works in a typing pool and the next she is working directly with a lawyer.  Instead of taking orders from his secretary, she has lunch with the lawyer himself “to go over what needed to be done”?  This lawyer doesn’t even know what his job is.  He tells Elizabeth, “’Canada is ideally positioned to provide intelligence to the British.  And that . . . is our role.’”  Then, one page later, the reader is told the lawyer’s job “was to see if any dealings and intelligence findings broke any laws of the country.”  Then, sentences later, he receives a telegram from an operative in Omaha, Nebraska, and decides the Department of Justice must “’move our contact out of the States’”? This lawyer is conducting intelligence operations?  And he shares sensitive information with Elizabeth at the end of her temporary placement in his office?

The book needs major editing.  There are comma splices on almost every page.  Verb tense is frequently misused.  Question marks are used when a statement is not actually interrogatory.  Paragraphs are indented, so why are there extra spaces between them?  Dialogue is very confusing:  it is often difficult to determine who is speaking because of unnecessary spacing and indentations.  There are some phrases which appear to be anachronisms.  (Chapter 17 with its switch to Josephine Smith’s point of view is also jarring.)

There is no doubt that the author is a history buff.  People interested in local history will find a great deal of it in the novel.  The problem is that there are several instances of information dumps.  Much of the first chapter is historical information about Cornwall.  There are even pages of photos included at the end of the book.

This book, at 121 pages, is short.  Even that length is more than necessary because there are irrelevant scenes.  For example, what is the purpose of the meeting at The Cornwall Club?  The community’s response to the downtown fire has no connection to the plot.  Is it really necessary to detail Elizabeth’s shopping for a car?  There is an obvious attempt to emphasize the perception of women’s roles in the 1930s, but the conversations on the topic could be more subtle and nuanced.

There are two other novels in the Elizabeth Grant series:  The Gale and The Literary Thread.  I will not be reading them.  This book lacks the suspense and intrigue I expect in a mystery, and the need for judicious revising and editing makes reading it a chore.