Scarlet Tunic: On Patrol with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Vol.2

Steven R. Hewitt teaches history at the University of Saskatchewan.

He’s back. Robert Gordon Teather, a veteran of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police with decades of service behind him, has once again put
pen to paper and produced more adventures involving him, his colleagues,
and the criminals and victims they encounter. As in Volume 1, Teather
packs into a single day events that actually took place over a lengthy
period of time, apparently because an actual day in the life of the RCMP
would catapult this book into the remainder bin.

In almost every respect, the structure of Volume 2 is identical to that
of its predecessor. In this version, instead of a child who may be
drowned, the reader is treated to a Mountie in a coma who may never wake
up. This melodrama-tic cliché grates, as does some of the stilted
dialogue.

Teather rides along unencumbered by such literary worries, conveying
with relish the brutality and coarseness of everyday policing. He even
confesses, with apparent glee, to breaking and entering while on duty.
No negative repercussions seem to have resulted from this unlawful
act—which is surprising, considering the soul-searching the RCMP went
through in the 1970s in the wake of the “dirty tricks” scandal. But
then perhaps such contradictions help to explain, in part, the
public’s continuing fascination with the RCMP.