Unputdownable Canadian Mysteries and Thrillers
This was a difficult assignment for me. But only because my own definition of what a “thriller book” is isn’t common. When I think of a “thriller” – and “mystery” too – I think about a book that is compelling, a book that I can’t stop reading, a book that has a strange mystery in it and doesn’t have a typical victim or criminal, a book that is psychologically thrilling and emotionally jarring and makes me put it down and walk away, slightly gasping, slightly in awe. I’m thinking about “literary thrillers,” and “mysteries” I guess, not mass market books, and so my recommendations here might surprise you. They’ve surprised me.
A Town Called Solace
by Mary Lawson (Vintage Canada)
In the literary novel, A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson, there are three distinct protagonists. A young girl, an older woman and a middle-aged man. The young girl’s teenage sister has run away and the young girl spends the novel spying on her anxious parents and the new man who has moved in next door when the older woman is taken to the hospital. With the three points of view, the mystery gradually reveals itself. There’s nothing thrilling about what has happened here, no one would call it a thriller, but there is a mystery that is eventually solved and the book is gripping and riveting throughout.
Here I Am!
by Pauline Holdstock (Biblioasis)
In Here I am! by Pauline Holdstock, six-year -old Frankie has discovered his mother has died overnight while his father is away on business. So instead of getting help Frankie gets on a boat that he thinks will take him to find his father. We are in his point of view throughout. Unfortunately, Frankie has boarded a cruise ship that will sail across the Atlantic Ocean. The mystery in this book emerges from the perspective that we are given. Frankie is special, very good at numbers and very thoughtful. A reader must put themself into this different mind to figure out what’s going on – so therefore the reader creates the mystery. And everything the reader brings to the idea of a six-year-old traveling alone across the ocean and not knowing what is going on, can be seen as thrilling. Not a typical “thriller” or “mystery” book but this one will compel you to read and leave you at the edge of your seat following Frankie. Something so simple as a small boy lost on a boat can be mysterious and thrilling.
Stealing John Hancock
by H & A Christensen (Turnstone Press)
Stealing John Hancock by H & A Christensen has thrilling elements all through it. JP is having a bad day, which gets even worse when he becomes the victim of identity theft. With the help of a hacker, JP, trying to clear his name, ends up trying to catch an international criminal and soon this book spins into a fast-paced con-game. Fun, fast, exciting, this book does not disappoint and should get more readers.
To Our Graves
by Paul Mason (Now or Never Publishing)
I’m also recommending another mystery, To Our Graves by Paul Mason. This book is about a fictional private school and the murder of a student. The book is billed as a “thrilling crime novel.” And it is. Fast-paced, gripping and engrossing, Mason plays with the idea of whether or not this crime was committed by forces inside the school or by someone coming in from outside. The setting of this Canadian private school is incredibly realistic and entrancing.
Lost girls
by Andrew Pyper (Harper Perennial)
Andrew Pyper is a Canadian thriller writer you will probably know. He has published many psychologically tense books over the years and his newest, William, is coming out this fall and has been published under a pseudonym, Mason Coile. But I want to go back to his earlier books. Particularly, Lost Girls, published in 1999. This was a book that was so subtle and terrifying to me, I think parts of it are permanently etched on my brain. A lawyer must go interview some students at a private school after there have been two killings and the reader follows him there. The problem is: this lawyer is addicted to cocaine. So things start happening, scary things, and the reader is left trying to figure out if these things are cocaine fueled or reality. Pyper plays with the reader’s mind throughout.
And maybe that’s what I like about thriller/mystery/literary books – that they manipulate my mind, they keep me guessing and pursuing and trying to figure out what’s going on. For me, the end result isn’t that important, it’s the journey that I find exciting. And the journey must involve something more than a suspenseful plot.
Moon of the Crusted Snow (ECW Press) and Moon of the Turning Leaves (Random House Canada)
by Waubgeshig Rice.
I’m also thinking of Waubgeshig Rice and his books, Moon of the Crusted Snow and Moon of the Turning Leaves. Both brilliant books that seep out horror, fear, psychological worry and damage, and an uneasy sense of the unknown. All the while pulling you along at a fast, exciting pace.
As I said at the beginning, recommending “thrillers” or “mysteries” isn’t easy for me. I also like some popular mass market books. But the ones that stick with me, that surprise me, are ones that don’t fit in the categories. I like the ones that aren’t even “thrillers” at all, but that contain a lot of elements of a thriller in them. I like when an image sticks in my brain (like Pyper’s wet sample of evidence-hair on the lawyer’s desk that won’t stop dripping, like the image of this small boy trying to grapple with his mother’s death in Here, I Am! and the reader being lost in his mind, like the young girl spying on her neighbour, like the torture box in Stealing John Hancock or the spectacularly Canadian setting of Mason’s private school with a dead body in the chapel).
I guess what's important is that I loved these books, right? Maybe it doesn’t matter where they are placed on shelves.
Michelle Berry is the author of seven novels and three books of short stories. Her books have been shortlisted, longlisted and won awards. Her writing has been optioned for film several times and she has been published in the UK. Berry was a reviewer for the Globe and Mail for many years. She teaches at the University of Toronto in the Continuing Education department and has also taught at Toronto Metropolitan University, Humber College and Trent University. She has been on the board of PEN Canada and the Writers’ Union of Canada and on the Authors’ Advisory Group of the Writers’ Trust of Canada. For five years Berry owned and operated her own independent bookstore in Peterborough, Ontario, called Hunter Street Books.
