Book Review

By Derryll White

Innes, Roy (2005). Murder In the Monashees.

I was drawn to this novel by the implication in the title that it was local to the Kootenays, and it is – situated in West Kootenay in the Slocan Valley.

I was initially disappointed by Innes’ misspelling of Doukhobor and by the name given to Corporal Blakemore’s Doukhobor friend, Clyde Groat. I have never met a Doukhobor male with a name even similar to that. Then Innes created a Green Party MLA in the novel, although the first Green MLA to be elected in B.C. did not occur until 2013. I began to feel fractures in my credibility filter.

Roy Innes does capture the essence of small town rural B.C. He takes liberties, giving a town like Silverton more facilities and businesses than one would find, but the reader has to cut the author some slack. On the other hand, however, Innes dwells on the particular and in doing so tells the reader more than is needed about fine dining, wines and Victoria hotels.

The story features vengeful murders and ingenious methods, which I won’t reveal here. The writing was adequate but not engaging or really stimulating. I was kept going by the local references but in the end it wasn’t enough. Innes gets bogged down by police procedure and “he said-she said,” with the flow of the story stalling as a result. I was disappointed with the final result.

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Excerpts from the book:

FUNERALS – Now, tears ran down his face, stopping as the hardware returned. He’d done the right thing this time. His wife’s funeral was awful. The preacher droned on and on about God and Jesus and going to a better place. There were so many people there – people who barely gave her the time of day when she was alive. All that “sympathy for your loss” shit and pats on the back.

FIREMEN – Firemen, thought Blakemore, even volunteers like these, are something else when the crunch is on. They’re like well-trained soldiers going over the top, seemingly oblivious to the danger, resolute, their weapons ready for the fight.

CATS – He liked cats, especially farm cats. They were cool, sitting quiet or walking about looking like they didn’t give a shit about anything, their faces expressionless. He admired their patience, waiting, waiting, motionless until the right second to pounce. He never saw one miss its intended victim.

UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA – Victoria is the City of Gardens, year round, and the landscape architects had a field day with its university. The students live and study in a veritable park, filled with trees, flowers, and shrubs of diverse species, all flourishing. One wonders, even in the fall, how the scholars maintain their concentration with such beauty visible out of every window.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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