Flight of Aquavit...

[fajrdrako]

Read a mystery novel called Flight of Aquavit by Anthony Bidelka. Enjoyed it greatly.

The detective hero Russell Quant lives and works in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and he's gay. The story is set just before Christmas and his mother has come to stay with him over Christmas - something that has never happened before. Villains try to attack him - warning him to drop his case - before he even has one. And when he is hired to discover who is blackmailing a very closeted local businessman, things just continue to get stranger.

I loved the wintry Canadian setting, which was so familiar - is Saskatoon really so like Ottawa? I liked the characters, and the flow of the action. I liked the hero and his dogs. To my horror, there were some grammatical and punctuation mistakes - "it's" for "its" on two occasions, making me wondering about the editing process.

Most of all, I was getting sexually frustrated on Quant's behalf - he keeps almost getting it on with various attractive men, but ends up empty-handed. I'd want to read more just to see if he ever finds a boyfriend.

Comments

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to Quant's love life, but while my experience of Saskatoon is 20 years old, I can say these things:

It can be like Ottawa in some respects, but usually the weather's a tad colder, and the river isn't nearly as busy as ours are. At least one neighbourhood directly south of the river from downtown puts me in mind of places like the side streets of the Glebe.

Have you ever read Gail Bowen's mystery novels? At least one is set in Saskatoon as well, and the rest are mostly set in Regina.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to Quant's love life

Only Anthony Bidulka knows for sure!

Yes, I've read some Gail Bowen - though not in the last few years. The ones I read were in Regina. That was fun, too, but I like Bidulka's writing style better.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

Do you know the chronological order of the books? Amazon.com (US) lists two different books as the 2nd in the Quant series, but none as the first.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

The first one is Amuse Bouche, according to the Ottawa Public Library, which was published in 2003, and the second is Flight of Aquavit, published in 2004. The third, Tapas on the Ramblas is from 2005. He's clearly a book a year kind of guy. The next two are Stain of the Berry (Blackberry or saskatoon berry?) and Sundowner Ubuntu. I hope he's working on the next even as we speak.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Further on the adventures of Russell Quant:

http://cancult.ca/2007/11/07/ctv-considers-gay-detective-series/

Thought you might be interested.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

How very cool! Thanks for the link - I'd love to see this as a CTV series.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

For myself, I don't think it matter so much who airs the series, so long as it happens. But, as you know, some small amount of my family's history is tied up in that province. ;-)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

No, I don't care who does it either, but it would be nice if it was actually a Canadian producer. That way they're not likely to do what they did to the Kathy Reichs stories - rewriting them to be about Washington, DC.

The Tempe Brennan Novels?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Now there was a missed opportunity for Damn Good CanCon Mystery/Crime Drama TV!

Re: The Tempe Brennan Novels?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It would have been so much more fun if set in Montreal, like the books - TV shows set in Washington are a dime a dozen.

Re: The Tempe Brennan Novels?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Amen to that.

And with all the TV being lensed in Regina these days, they can't use the "no infrastructure" excuse anymore to shift future adaptations of Gail Bowen's novels away to Toronto.

No problems with rehiring Wendy Crewson to play Joanne Kilbourne again, though.