Minds
THE WALRUS • MARCH 2OII
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BOOKS
Crímínou8 Minds
A new wave ofcrime writers is exploring Canada's darken corners
BY RICHARD POPLAK ILLUSTRATION BY JACK DYLAN
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY:
and beaver-shaped shortbread. Rush espies the young Rosalind Canon, CanLit Wunderkind of the moment. She is flush with a Dickie nom, a considerable book advance, and the adulation of the culturocracy. Why not me? whines Rush, borrowing the italics Stephen King made a thriller hallmark back in the '70s. He continues: Luck. Pulled strings. Marketability. Though there is always some- . thing else, too. A compelling order to things, a story's beginning, middle and end. Me} All I have is all most of us have. The messy garble of a lifein-progress. Desperate for a narrative. Rush steals someone else's story and turns it into a mega-selling thriller called The Sandman. He is then forced to dismember a corpse, watch helplessly as his son is kidnapped, and undergo sundry trials that make Job's ordeal resemble a weekend winning streak in Vegas. It all ends, unhappily, in a dilapidated house in the frozen Canadian backwoods.
The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper Doubleday Canada (2008) The Suicide Murders by Howard Engel Penguin Canada (1980) Forty Wordsfor Sorrow by Giles Blunt Random House Canada (2000) The Murder Stone by Louise Penny Headline (2008)
The Guardians by Andrew Pyper Doubleday Canada (2011)
R
oughly a third of the way into Andrew Pyper's bestselling The Killing Circle (2008), sodden anti-hero Patrick Rush—a hack newspaper critic with literary aspirations— scores an invite to the Quotidian Awards. Affectionately known as the Dickies, the Quotidian is handed out to the work of fiction that "best reflects the domestic heritage of Canadian family life." Among plates of caribou tartare
61
THE WALRUS • MARCH 2 0 I I
Presents
THE WALRUS MCGILL DEBATE AT THE SEGAL CENTRE
The Walrus McGill Debate at the Segal
lltSIHilliiKHIIIIIIIIIillHIIIiniltli
BOOKS
Crímínou8 Minds
A new wave ofcrime writers is exploring Canada's darken corners
BY RICHARD POPLAK ILLUSTRATION BY JACK DYLAN
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY:
and beaver-shaped shortbread. Rush espies the young Rosalind Canon, CanLit Wunderkind of the moment. She is flush with a Dickie nom, a considerable book advance, and the adulation of the culturocracy. Why not me? whines Rush, borrowing the italics Stephen King made a thriller hallmark back in the '70s. He continues: Luck. Pulled strings. Marketability. Though there is always some- . thing else, too. A compelling order to things, a story's beginning, middle and end. Me} All I have is all most of us have. The messy garble of a lifein-progress. Desperate for a narrative. Rush steals someone else's story and turns it into a mega-selling thriller called The Sandman. He is then forced to dismember a corpse, watch helplessly as his son is kidnapped, and undergo sundry trials that make Job's ordeal resemble a weekend winning streak in Vegas. It all ends, unhappily, in a dilapidated house in the frozen Canadian backwoods.
The Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper Doubleday Canada (2008) The Suicide Murders by Howard Engel Penguin Canada (1980) Forty Wordsfor Sorrow by Giles Blunt Random House Canada (2000) The Murder Stone by Louise Penny Headline (2008)
The Guardians by Andrew Pyper Doubleday Canada (2011)
R
oughly a third of the way into Andrew Pyper's bestselling The Killing Circle (2008), sodden anti-hero Patrick Rush—a hack newspaper critic with literary aspirations— scores an invite to the Quotidian Awards. Affectionately known as the Dickies, the Quotidian is handed out to the work of fiction that "best reflects the domestic heritage of Canadian family life." Among plates of caribou tartare
61
THE WALRUS • MARCH 2 0 I I
Presents
THE WALRUS MCGILL DEBATE AT THE SEGAL CENTRE
The Walrus McGill Debate at the Segal