ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

Dundurn Press, 352 pages, $23.99

Ottawa’s Inspector Michael Green makes a welcome return in the 12th instalment of Barbara Fradkin’s acclaimed series of police procedurals. In this new volume, Green has been sidelined from active duty to an administrative role, but when the body of an elderly Ukrainian woman is discovered in an alley, he finds himself inexorably pulled into the case. Aided by his daughter Hannah, now a police officer herself, her boyfriend Josh, a junior homicide detective assigned to the case, and his old friend Brian Sullivan, Green inserts himself ever more deeply into an investigation that will prove to have highly personal consequences.

Fradkin’s narrative is set in the post-COVID present but reaches back to the horrors of the Holocaust and the legacy of Nazi atrocities in the Second World War. It touches on the Lodz Ghetto and the Warsaw uprising; the horrendous German death marches toward the war’s end; and the Deschênes Commission, a 1980s inquiry into Nazi war criminals living in Canada. In the process, the novel draws a direct line between the attempted genocide of European Jews under the Nazis and the current resurgence of far-right agitators.

But “Shipwrecked Souls� is neither a polemic nor mere history lesson. It is a full-throttle crime thriller that just happens to have a sharp social context behind it. The impulsive and rule-breaking Green is a strong protagonist and Fradkin’s Ottawa is, as ever, precisely rendered and vivid. This is a highly relevant and, more important, hugely entertaining addition to one of the country’s best ongoing crime series.

Can’t Run, Can’t Hide

Yrsa Sigurdardottir; translated by Victoria Cribb

Hodder & Stoughton, 448 pages, $28.99

The queen of Icelandic noir returns with the first book of a new series featuring police detective Tyr Gautason and his partner, Karolina. The tone of the novel is set in the first chapter, in which a neighbour discovers the bodies of a mother, her two daughters and the girl’s live-in nanny, all of whom have been slaughtered with what appears to be an axe. The father is not in the house, leading the detectives on a frantic search to determine what happened.

Sigurdardottir shuttles back and forth in time, detailing the police investigation in the narrative present and the days leading up to the crime in the past. As Tyr and Karolina investigate, the reader becomes privy to the developing relationship between nanny Soldis, teen Iris and seven-year-old Gigja and the girls’ parents, the domineering Asa and Reynir, who is recovering from a brain tumour.

The procedural elements are handled solidly, but it’s the second braided storyline focusing on the family and its secrets that is the real draw here. Sigurdardottir creates an air of increasing menace and claustrophobia as the story moves inexorably toward the bloodbath we know is coming, inserting Gothic elements such as shadowy figures in the snow (including a herd of horses) and strange noises in the night. It adds up to a grim but enthralling experience that bodes well for future instalments.

Saint of the Narrows Street

William Boyle

Soho Crime, 448 pages, $38.95

American author William Boyle returns to the Gravesend neighbourhood of Brooklyn for a novel that spans decades to tell the story of the Franzones — Risa, her sister Giulia and son Fab. The inciting incident, in 1986, sees Risa accidentally murder her abusive husband, Sav, with a cast-iron skillet, after which she enlists her sister and their friend Christopher (known as “Chooch�) to dispose of the body.

So far, so conventional. But Boyle is more interested in the repercussions of the crime, which he follows through the decades, ending in 2004, by which time Fab is a disgruntled youth whose increasingly violent behaviour forces a confrontation with the ghosts from the family’s past.

Boyle knows his territory well and is equally adept at dramatizing domestic strife and the criminal underbelly of Brooklyn that entangles folks such as Fab and a dissolute priest named Father Tim. Even the peripheral characters are carefully drawn, including a local bartender named Widow Marie, her patron Jane the Stain and an elderly mob enforcer known as Joey Sends. The novel’s four-part structure becomes a tad episodic, but this is still a potent crime saga with surprising emotional heft.

One Minute More

Robert Rotenberg

Simon & Schuster, 336 pages, $24.99

ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½ author Robert Rotenberg returns to his recurring young detective Ari Greene in a novel that serves as a prequel to his popular series. The backdrop is the 1988 G7 summit in ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½, and as the novel opens, Greene has been dispatched to Quebec to follow up on an anonymous tip that a killer will be crossing the border intent on assassinating the gathered leaders in three days’ time.

Unlike Rotenberg’s other novels, this is neither a police procedural nor a courtroom drama, but rather a beat-the-clock chase thriller as Greene pursues his target, a strikingly beautiful woman named Marina, from an initial murder spree at the Stanstead, Que., Fourth of July parade on the Canada/U.S. border, through the Thousand Islands (actually 1,864 islands, as we are repeatedly informed), ultimately ending at the University of ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½â€™s Hart House, where the world leaders will gather for an outdoor photo op.

Marina is a cross between Frederick Forsyth’s Jackal and Villanelle from “Killing Eve,â€� but Rotenberg’s hold on his material is unsure; the early stages are frantically paced, but the narrative slows as it approaches the climax. And how does the assassin, dressed as a Shriners’ clown to cross the border during the parade, manage to smuggle in a knapsack big enough to transform into a carryall capable of hiding a human body? Best not to ask such questions: there’s suspension of disbelief, and then there’s intellectual suicide.