Matinee Idol

B.J. Busch is Associate Librarian (Access and Information Services) at
the University of Alberta.

Matinee Idol is movie critic Ron Base’s first novel, and it is a good one. Tom Coward, a mercurial and nomadic journalist-hero attempting to regain the affections of his former lover, Stormy Willis, becomes involved in a web of murder spanning two generations. His conviction that Stormy’s new lover is not all that he appears to be sends Coward on a quest for the truth, which takes him into the seamy underside of movie making — drugs, sex, Mafioso-style villains. The plot twists and turns from California to Toronto to New York, as the journalist-hero thrusts himself into dangerous situations and nearly gets himself killed several times. Remarkably, he survives, but his triumph, in the end, only serves to confirm what Stormy knew all along: love cannot transcend the dictates of his nature. The style of this thriller is fast-paced and straightforward, although the plot itself holds many surprises. Base’s descriptions of the Toronto landscape are vaguely reminiscent of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser’s descriptions of Boston. They give life to the story and present a visual panorama which involves the reader more closely in the action. Unfortunately, Base resorts to a kind of Toronto-bashing, totally gratuitous in a work that has the potential for international success. He gets most of it out of the way in the first 60 pages, but in those 60 pages it is pretty heavy: “Willy Conlon was a Canadian boy, Toronto born, and thus was narrow-minded, naive, nasty when provoked...” (p.3); “It was a glum, claustrophobic city, where everything seemed to be prohibited on the general principle that it might be fun” (p.9); “You walked out on a street in New York and you could feel the adrenalin pumping. You walked out on a street in Toronto and you worried about leaving a candy wrapper on the pavement” (p.56). Occasionally, it is humourous. When the owner of a sexual aids shop is murdered, Tom responds: “Good grief... In Toronto yet. No wonder she was killed” (p. 17). Despite the irksome heavy-handedness with respect to Toronto, the book is a real treat.