What makes the strength of a detective novel and distinguishes it from another, if not its characters? Beyond a credible and well-conducted plot, the thrillers that we remember are those that give birth to investigators whose myth ends up going beyond the work, like a Kurt Wallander or a Harry Bosch.
Posted at 11:30 a.m.
The characters of Ontario’s Scott Thornley embody this new generation of police officers who have nothing of the badass of an era. Investigators who feel no embarrassment in expressing their feelings or showing their repugnance at the sight of a corpse. Who have understood that they are above all human beings before being cops. And it is perhaps that, precisely, which makes Inspector Iain MacNeice and his partner, Fiza Aziz, fundamentally endearing characters that we want to find again.
Widowed, MacNeice acts with the righteousness that one imagines in these investigators inhabited by a true vocation, although he is undermined by immeasurable grief since the disappearance of his wife. He’s a sensitive and thoughtful policeman, by his partner’s own admission, and both share the same unflinching sense of duty – despite the doubts that assail them in the face of the horror and risks of the job. “You just have to keep walking. It’s grim, no doubt, but it’s essential,” MacNeice will say when asked by her teammate why they do such a job.
If we embark so quickly on this third title in French, it is undoubtedly because we immediately have the feeling of reconnecting with old acquaintances – whether or not we have read the previous novels (burnt memory and Of chrome and bloodtranslated last year). Down to the marrow again transports us to the fictional town of Dundurn, on the shores of Lake Ontario. During a particularly rainy month of March, the body of a woman is found in Cootes Paradise Bay; the police barely have time to open their investigation to identify the victim that there is a second death in a park, leading us into the tangled threads of two distinct and equally gripping stories.
What also makes the novel special is that not only are we very close to home, in familiar territory, but the translator has wisely chosen to quebecize the dialogues – including the coronations –, accentuating even more this effect of proximity.
Definitely entertaining, Down to the marrow Definitely registers Inspector MacNeice among the characters to follow in the thriller. And those who loved the famous character of Giles Blunt, John Cardinal, will certainly enjoy finding this same typically Anglo-Saxon phlegm. When is the TV series inspired by the novels?
Down to the marrow
Scott Thornley, translated from English by Éric Fontaine
boreal
408 pages