Carry Tiger to Mountain: An Elias McCann Mystery

Geoff Cragg is a tenured instructor in the Faculty of General Studies at
the University of Calgary in Alberta.

This is the second novel by Mark Zuehlke in a series featuring Elias
McCann as the quirky and at times reluctant coroner for the town of
Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Narrated primarily through
McCann’s voice, the plot revolves around the wreck of a ship carrying
illegal Chinese immigrants. The action escalates when Cheng, one of the
gang members responsible for the smuggling, evades the police and plots
revenge against a number of people, including McCann and his girlfriend
Vhanna, who is related to a member of the crew.

The plot is complex and fast-paced; the action shifts between Tofino
and Victoria. Despite the author’s disclaimer that the settings are to
be understood as fictional, they are convincing and employ many specific
details of real places, including the beer available at Swan’s Hotel
in Victoria.

Characterization is perhaps less strong than the other major elements.
McCann is understandably the fullest character, convincing as a
present-remittance man with a troubled past that earns him the suspicion
of the local RCMP sergeant. Perhaps Zuehlke’s historical scholarship
into the remittance men helps him here. At times passive and retiring,
yet capable of action and resolve, McCann is a complex and contradictory
character. Vhanna, in contrast, is much less clearly drawn; given that
McCann himself finds her reserved and withdrawn after her return from
her homeland of Cambodia, perhaps we should not expect much insight into
her personality. But given the obvious strengths of her personal
qualities, her sketchy presentation weakens our understanding of her
relationship with McCann, which is central to the plot. Vhanna’s
cousin Kim, though a minor character, is interesting because of what we
don’t know about him, and a significant part of the narrative is told
from his perspective. Though his desire for revenge is the mainspring of
the plot, the gangster Cheng is revealed solely through his actions,
which is not enough to provide any insight into his motivations.

Despite some unevenness in characterization, this is an effective
thriller and a successful novel, with strong action and atmosphere, a
large cast of intriguing and often eccentric characters, and a number of
powerful themes including family and isolation. The author seems to have
found a winning formula for future novels in this series.