Cut Off His Tale

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

After three years of a “compartmentalized” marriage, Hollis Grant
and the Reverend Paul Robertson plan to divorce. However, someone
plunges a knife into Paul’s back at the start of Ottawa’s National
Capital Marathon. Hollis, further back in the pack, discovers the body
and responds to his violent death with shock, pity, horror, and relief.
An ordained minister noted for his activism, Paul had impulsively
married Hollis “believing she was a conservative professor, a plain
little bird, a wren,” but when she “metamorphed into a parrot, a
noisy raucous bird that gloried in colour,” the marriage began to
unravel.

Knowing that standard police procedure directed by Detective Rhonda
Simpson will focus on the spouse as a suspect, Hollis refuses to be a
helpless victim and resolves to conduct her own investigation. Paul’s
death initiates an examination of his life, and the real Paul gradually
emerges: “a man with no conscience” intent on “achieving his own
ends,” a blackmailer, a self-serving counsellor with a “ruthless
disregard” for others, a womanizer, “a professional manipulator.”
Unfortunately, Hollis quickly realizes that the murderer still threatens
as she suffers two break-ins at the manse, receives a possible letter
bomb, and escapes an attack with a bullet wound to her leg. She
concludes that the manuscript of Paul’s upcoming “tale,” in which
he uses actual criminal cases, albeit without names, lies at the heart
of the murder. When Paul’s latest female conquest dies after
announcing she knows all his secrets, Simpson turns her focus from
Hollis and ultimately saves her from becoming another victim.

An active member of Ottawa’s “Ladies’ Killing Circle,” Boswell,
with award-winning stories to her credit, presents her first cosy
mystery. The well-plotted tale maintains a brisk pace. Using two strong
female characters—Hollis, the social historian and professor, and
Rhonda, the homicide detective—tends to shift the perspective and the
point of view. Both women are appealing characters, but like many first
novels Cut off His Tale suffers somewhat from more telling than showing
in developing characterization. However, mystery devotees will
appreciate the clever plot twists and look forward to the next Hollis
Grant novel.