Dream Chasers: An Inspector Green Mystery.

Michael Payne is head of the reasearch and publications program,
Historic Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development, and
co-author of A Narrative History of Fort Dunvegan.

This is the sixth volume in Barbara Fradkin’s series of detective novels featuring Inspector Michael Green of the Ottawa Police Service. Like previous books in the series, Dream Chasers neatly juxtaposes a solid police procedural with Inspector Green’s complicated personal and family life. In this case, a young woman dies under mysterious circumstances, and Green cannot resist the opportunity to investigate what may or may not be a crime. In the process, he learns a great deal about the secret world of Ottawa teenagers, including details about sex, drugs, and sports that cause friction between Green and his own fiercely independent, but emotionally vulnerable, daughter.

Many series that place the personal and family lives of their police protagonists at the centre of the story can pall after several volumes as the plots become repetitive and the crime investigation becomes just a device to move the personal drama ahead. Fradkin avoids this problem by ensuring that the mystery in this novel is carefully plotted and worthy of her detective’s investigative skills. Green has to determine whom the victim met the night she died and why that person is reluctant to come forward. Equally at issue is whether the victim died as the result of a criminal act or an accident, and what exactly was the cause of death. A nosy school board social worker also blunders into the case, trying to solve the mystery for personal reasons. When she too is murdered, Green has to determine how the cases are connected and whether or not he has multiple killers—or just one—to uncover.

An interesting aspect of the book is the way it treats the aspirations of teenagers for social power and athletic success and the risky behaviour they exhibit in the pursuit of these goals. No less significant to the plot, however, are the rather sinister actions of adults who have an even greater interest in manipulating and profiting from teenagers—in this case a young man with enormous potential as a hockey player.

Fradkin has won two previous Arthur Ellis awards for her Inspector Green mysteries, and this new addition to the series maintains the high standard of the previous books. It must now rate as one of the most successful series of detective novels yet written in Canada, and it compares very well with better known and promoted series of police novels from British, Scandinavian, and American authors.