The Next Rainy Day

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Philip Alexander’s debut novel is gritty and dangerous: gritty in the
grimness of its subject, dangerous in its insistence on honest emotion,
rather than pathos and melodrama, in the face of the death of a child.
The accidental killing of the nine-year-old son of Toronto policeman
Grant McRae provides the novel’s substance. The boy is run down by a
car driven by Russell, the difficult older son of the book’s other
protagonist, Bert Commerford, a local businessman who has just lost his
youngest son as well as his wife.

There are two voices and two points of view in The Next Rainy Day.
McRae’s is in the third person. Commerford speaks in the first person;
his pain and confusion are extreme. Russell is the negative force
running through the story; he is directly responsible not only for the
killing of McRae’s son, but also for the death of his younger brother,
Travis. When McRae returns to his duties as a cop, he is partnered with
an officer who is dealing with demons of his own.

Alexander’s narrative structure uses parallel threads that converge
about midway through the story, resulting in an ugly and tragic
conclusion. His writing is sparse; his dialogue usually rings true. This
is a noteworthy effort.