The Brutal Heart.

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

With a general election just weeks away, Joanne Kilbourn is putting together a TV programme about the election campaign of Ginny Monaghan, a controversial woman who has her eyes on the leadership of the Federal Conservative Party. It’s a welcome distraction for Joanne from the news of the brutal murder of a local call girl, one whose prominent clientele once included Joanne’s new husband, Zach Shreve. As her marriage creaks under the strain of this revelation, Joanne throws herself into her work and into finding out why the dead woman threatened to blackmail her clients.

That blurb may give the basic premise of the book, but it leaves so many things unsaid. There are so many bodies, so many confused feelings.  We have a succession of family dynamics—Ginny and her twin daughters, Joanne and Zach; and Taylor, whose mother was Joanne’s best friend and whose artistic talents she has clearly inherited; Mieka, Joanne’s daughter and her two children.  While the plots and counter-plots swirl around us, the lives of these three groups overlap many times.  Despite all the threats, we also see many telling snapshots of family life in Regina and at the lake.

Readers may sometimes wonder whether there are too many threads to untangle here, as so many prominent individuals are threatened in the fallout following Cristal’s murder, but in the end, justice is done. Ginny may lose the election, but she and her girls are true survivors, while other relationships are only strengthened by the chain of events.

This is a fast moving tale of murder and mayhem and a true page-turner. It is Gail Bowen’s 11th Joanne Kilbourn Mystery.  I have read several, and this is possibly the best I have read.