Madelaine: An Evan Paris Mystery

Kim Van Vliet is a Winnipeg-based freelance writer.

This is the first in what promises to be a series of mystery novels starring Evan Paris, whose chief occupation at the beginning of the story is the upkeep of his “California hillside estate” and the mourning of his recently murdered and much beloved wife Anne. It takes a visit from a desperate and pathetic old woman and her three-year-old great-granddaughter Trudy to rouse his sympathy — “Her eyes clung to mine like fingers grasping the edge of a cliff” — and draw him into the case of Madelaine, the young woman whose murder has left Trudy an orphan. Evan Paris is induced to search for her natural father, whose identity has never been disclosed. The plot contains the usual damsels in distress, fisticuffs, and close-shave shoot-outs which create the suspense, keep the action moving, and allow the hero to prove his prowess.

This is a slick novel with lots of money, power, corruption, and sex scandals. Evan Paris is handsome and rich with a tragic air to give him dramatic appeal and keep him somewhat aloof from the adoring females. He refers constantly to his deceased wife with lines like, “Anne used to say the trouble with cats is they talk a lot but they never say anything.” He also relives her murder and his subsequent tracking down of her killers. Our hero comes up with a lot of hokey lines on his own behalf as well —“The choices for me were already laid down like some giant railroad track in the sky.” I figure that these are supposed to show the man’s hard-earned wisdom and perhaps give him a more down-to-earth quality. They get somewhat tiresome and don’t seem to fit the rest of the image and his past, which includes pro football, wheeling and dealing on the stock market, making a few million or so, a master’s degree and teaching career in criminology, writing best-selling novels, and being cool in general.

The book seems to be written for a television audience (or an audience used to television) with an eye to appearance, image, style, and what sells. Though the set-up of the mystery and the clues are solid and interesting enough, the characters are all gloss and stereotype and the ending is neatly happily-ever-after and so improbable that it makes the sell-out complete. The only thing Canadian about this novel is its devotion to American television.