In Love with Then

Chris Redmond is the director of internal communications at the
University of Waterloo and author of A Sherlock Holmes Handbook.

Mike MacDonald, the protagonist in this depressing mystery story,
can’t make his marriage work, can’t get past his memories of a world
war 40 years ago, can’t understand his schizophrenic son, can’t do
anything much but drink whiskey. He and his friends hang out at the
Legion, vomit frequently, feel terrible the morning after, and wonder
who cut the throat of one of their buddies, just as two of their buddies
had their throats cut in Italy during the war. MacDonald tries to find
out (and is aided by his status as a sort of low-grade private
investigator, a skip tracer in the lower echelons of Cape Breton
society), but can make progress only in the intervals between adopting a
litter of stray dogs, quarreling with the sister he’s quarreled with
for 40 years, wondering why his crazy son once tried to kill him, and
trying (and failing to) look after his dying father. And drinking
heroically.

There are visits to a shack in a dump where the deceased wasted his
life; to a trendy restaurant where the investigator conspicuously
doesn’t belong; to the nursing home where the old father drools away
his last days. No sex scenes, though. Solving the mystery involves a
widely respected patronage politician (what else should we expect from a
tale set in the Maritimes?) with the obligatory “mane of silver” and
the obligatory Godfather morality. Who killed “Rags” Smythe? Who
cares?