Uneasy Lies: A Helen Keremos Mystery

Kelly L. Green is a free-lance writer living in Ajax, Ontario.

This new mystery novel featuring detective Helen Keremos is
entertaining, enlightening, and suspenseful. Keremos, a middle-aged
lesbian biding her time in Toronto while her young lover tries to break
into theatre, lands a temporary job as head of security in a condo
building. Almost immediately, a resident—a young environmental lawyer
with questionable ethics—is found murdered in a vacant apartment.

Zaremba’s cast of suspects is as varied as only a random selection of
Toronto residents can be. Suspects include the victim’s wife, a
high-flying corporate lawyer herself, an independently wealthy immigrant
dentist and his young girlfriend; the regular chief of security,
supposedly on emergency family business in India; a recently widowed
housewife and her teenage son; and the manager of the condo complex,
Keremos’s employer and ex-lover.

Zaremba throws in minor characters with panache. There’s a yuppie
police detective who, in the middle of the night, sports carefully
casual clothes and tasseled loafers, accompanied by his neo-Nazi
sidekick. Also figuring in the plot are a bejeweled property developer
and his muscle-bound misogynist henchman, our Helen’s nemesis.

Zaremba’s tale is delightful and insightful. Her witty, satiric prose
gives heterosexuals a glimpse of how the other side lives, and many a
good belly laugh besides. She excels at describing characters and
physical surroundings. Her description of Romulu’s face creates a
solid picture in the reader’s mind: “A wispy moustache clung to his
face over full fleshy lips and straight yellowing teeth. However, the
lower part of his face went unnoticed because the features which drew
all eyes were the enormous shelflike eyebrows. Like Stalin’s.”
Following in the Trollopean tradition, she gives her characters uniquely
fitting monikers; wealthy European dentist Melhior Romulu and his
paramour Eleena DeMoulard are cases in point.

Only two complaints: the dialogue is occasionally stilted and
unnatural; and sometimes all the characters seem to speak with one
voice. Also, the forgettable title does not do justice to this
delightful book of mystery and social satire.