Menace

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

This is the 13th in a fine series of mysteries set evocatively on
British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast by the first Canadian and the only
woman to win the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Novel (The Suspect,
1985). Until recently, the sleuth was RCMP Staff Sgt. Karl Alberg, head
of the Sechelt detachment, but when he retired in the previous novel his
second-in-command, Sgt. Edwina Henderson, temporarily took over. The
first Henderson mystery, Kidnap (2000), ended with her transfer to head
the detachment down the coast at Gibsons; Menace tells of her first
months there, during which a mysterious stalker is terrifying a social
worker.

The book is both a whodunit and a chilling novel of psychological
suspense, since Wright insinuates us into the minds of her characters,
be they sleuth, victim, or psychopath. She builds suspense in short
chapters, making the book difficult to put down, and she superbly evokes
the ambience and the seasons of her Pacific Coast locale. Her characters
are believable and their lives engrossing, but since this book is the
second in a new series, one should begin with the previous novel
(Kidnap), or if a newcomer to Wright’s work, with The Suspect.

In 2001, the Crime Writers of Canada honored L.R. Wright with a
lifetime achievement award but, unhappily, it was posthumous. Her
untimely death ends a superlative series of novels and is a great loss
to Canadian fiction.