Overexposed: A Granville Island Mystery

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher-librarian in Abbotsford, B.C.

On the morning after his 40th birthday bash, Vancouver commercial
photographer Tom McCall, hung over and hurting, discovers a well-dressed
corpse “slumped in a plastic lawn chair” on the roof deck of his
False Creek floating home. Neither Tom nor his guests know the man,
although they saw him in Tom’s kitchen during the party.

Trying to salvage his vulnerable business with a problematic new client
keeps Tom and his charming partner, Bobbi, fully occupied, but life
keeps intruding. Tom’s sister is having a mid-life crisis, and his
ex-wife wants to take his daughter to Australia for a year while Hilly
is determined to stay with him. First the police and then unidentified
persons search his house. Further complications ensue when Reeny, an old
love interest first encountered in If Looks Could Kill (2001), moves in
with him after she is evicted from her home.

Well-paced action, snappy dialogue, witty prose, an appealingly low-key
protagonist, engaging secondary characters, and a laudable absence of
gratuitous violence combine to produce an entertaining, well-written
mystery. The author skilfully weaves together its disparate elements and
brings the action to a riveting climax that sorts out the villains.
Although Blair lives in Montreal, he captures the landscape and
atmosphere of Granville Island exceptionally well.