Jewels

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Elegantly entertaining, Jewels is the story of a most unlikely set of criminal conspirators: queen fish, all of them, with the “fish” motif carried through the length of the story. The triumvirate are the weird but well-loved caretaker of a Victoria establishment for retired gentry in which the elderly well-heeled come to live out their sunset years; a feisty, nuggety little woman who must endure an uncongenial job in an abattoir but who has never given up her dreams; and a closet-gay librarian, who had thought his secret safe until he overheard his colleagues calling him “Julia” behind his back. The three become entangled in an unlikely police chase involving stolen treasure and fish and subsequently find themselves in some very peculiar haunts. Julian, in particular, can hardly believe that he himself is actually sitting in a “honky tonk”! Readable, sometimes funny, often very moving, the serious message of this story of society’s victims slips down almost, but not quite, unnoticed. Presented in a notably attractive and appropriate paper binding.