Field Work

Although there are too few feminist murder mysteries to be able to speak of a genre, Field Work is another of the books that are building the base of such a genre. And, as do many of its cousin works, it relies as much on character as it does on plot, and the story is one of ordinary people into whose lives comes an extraordinary event.

Marsha Lewis is a single mother who struggles to make ends meet while finishing a degree in criminology. The fieldwork for one of her courses places her with the city police homicide squad. The kind of gynecologist all too many women would like to see meet such a fate is murdered as he leaves his office one evening, and some of Vancouver’s women health activists appear high on the list of suspects. Marsha’s two worlds collide, the action accelerates, and the danger increases.

I lived in Vancouver for many years and moved to Toronto 12 years ago. The novel evokes Vancouver, and the women’s movement there, as I knew them. I don’t know whether the book is a period piece in that sense, or whether its atmosphere reflects the West Coast being quintessentially itself. Either way, Moore so vividly evokes Vancouver that I can almost hear the fog horns. The feminist presence, too, is strong and real and at the same time integrated and unobtrusive — these women live feminism as do so many women, and it’s altogether too rarely that such women see themselves in print without parody, cruelty, or voyeurism. The story develops smoothly and well, the people ring true, and a variety of human conditions come to light. For feminist murder buffs the book is a real treat; non-feminists may be surprised by this look into a way of being in the world that merits sympathetic exploration.

Field Work is a good read. It is Maureen Moore’s first novel, and with any luck will be the first of many.