The Last Hand: A Charlie Salter Mystery

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Canada’s best-known fictional policeman, Toronto’s Staff Inspector
Charlie Salter, has been on hiatus since Death by Degrees (1993), while
his creator has given us two new series detectives and three other books
including a memoir. Although it is a great pleasure to see Charlie
again, the portent for fans is not encouraging. There is the title
itself, for one thing, and after the opening pages present a litany of
Charlie’s physical and mental complaints, a former boss tells the
60-year-old Salter (who has not kept up with the latest police
techniques and is ignored by many of the younger men), “You’ve gotta
retire this year. That’s the rule.” This, it seems likely, is to be
Charlie Salter’s last case. It is a case in which, with plodding,
patient, old-fashioned detection, Charlie solves the murder of a Toronto
lawyer while continuing to develop his relationship with his sons, one
of whom was 14 in the first book and is now the father of a daughter. No
violence here, only a bare minimum of obscene chatter, and little
page-turning suspense—just a good story, familiar Toronto settings, a
family we care about, and a pleasant, comfortable read.