Deadly Reunion

E. Jane Philipps is head of the Biology Library at Queen’s University
in Kingston.

According to her lover, Judy, intrepid lesbian sleuth Harriet (Harry)
Hubbley, in her second outing, is simply “too curious to leave it
alone.” A physical-education teacher by vocation, Harry, in a moment
of nostalgic enthusiasm soon regretted, decides to return to the small
Nova Scotia fishing village where she grew up, to attend the
30th-anniversary reunion of her high-school class. The occasion, marred
on the first evening by the murder of classmate Wayne Williams, results
in a revealing exploration of the intrigues and disappointments of
small-town life and of adolescent dreams shared, realized, and
unfulfilled. Wayne, it seems, had something on everyone, and Harry,
fresh from her successful solution of the mysterious death of an elderly
hotelier on Cape Cod (in Ghost Motel) and doubting the abilities of
stolid police officer and peer Sandy Burns, undertakes to uncover the
secrets that resulted in Wayne’s death.

Manthorne’s prose tends toward the wooden, lacking the passion and
vigor of her short stories. Nonetheless, the plot moves along at an
attention-holding pace and Harriet Hubbley, an appealingly forthright
character, communicates with energy and sympathy the pains and joys of
human relationships, whatever their orientation or origin. Deadly
Reunion engages and entertains.