[.ca] Quarrel With The Foe (ISBN 1894917286)

A Fascinating Portrait of Toronto in the Roaring Twenties:
Is there no era that Mel Bradshaw can't capture with a precision equal only to sensibility? Fresh on the success of his depiction of mid-nineteenth-century Toronto in his Arthur Ellis-nominated first novel, Death in the Age of Steam, Bradshaw mines his hometown in the Twenties and uncovers pure gold in Quarrel with the Foe. The compelling "curtain-raiser" is set during the Great War and starts off with a bang: "Yeah, I was at the battery that May afternoon when Horny Ingersoll had everything between his legs cut away by a piece of exploding field gun." The realities of trench warfare in France in 1915 outside Ypres, one of the Canadians' finest and bloodiest stands, are depicted with truth and horror. Flash forward eleven years. The narrator is Paul Shenstone, a former soldier, now a police detective. Accustomed to the slow fare of petty criminals and warring rumrunners, he's pleased to be assigned to investigate the strange murder of a wealthy industrialist, an armament maker turned to peace-time engineering. Digby Watt has been shot dead on the pavement in the financial district, but the killer took his time. Even more mysterious than the lack of shell casings is the fact that the body has been "interfered with." The problem is that Shenstone soon learns that he has connections to the case. He recognizes the reporter who was given a suspicious hot tip about where the body could be found. Years ago, they both witnessed Horny's accident caused by a defective shell, holes in the metal painted over in a carelessness equal to sabotage, and remember the passionate promises to take revenge on suppliers who put profits ahead of their own soldiers. Watt's company produced that fatal shell. But other suspects emerge. The businessman's frustrated son, eager to take over as CEO. The flapper sister Edith has a few ideas of her own about their German chauffeur and makes a good foil for her more languid but ambitious sister-in-law. At one crucial point, Shenstone himself has his ethics questioned. Suppose he is leading the investigation astray to cover for a friend, or worse yet, himself? Bradshaw paints a faithful and compelling picture of the era, a master of details. When he mentions a Chaplin movie, a bottle of Aspirin (capital A), or the Ontario Temperance Act, he fills in the background for his exciting plot. Auto buffs will enjoy the amusing little Austin Chummy, a "rackety" four-cylinder runabout Shenstone and Edith use for a trip to the cottage. The underside of a Gray-Dort sedan is examined for tampering, its steering gear described as if the mechanic stood nearby. Old Toronto appears block by block, from the Toronto Police Department crammed into the ground floor of City Hall to the corridors of the Toronto Examiner. Shenstone stands near the "new elevated railway tracks," watching as "the street teemed with billboards, shop signs, streetcar wires, square black Ford motorcars, and a lone traffic cop...in his English-bobby style helmet." As for weapons, the detective favors the Webley Mark IV for his personal weapon, but small-caliber .25 pistols are on the street and even in the occasional beaded reticule. Whether he's describing a lady's period dress or bobbed hair, Bradshaw continues to set his stage with care. Imagining Shenstone bumping over the trolley tracks in his police-model Harley Davidson brings a smile. Even the slang of the period, from "whippersnapper" to "hokum" to "banana oil," adds to the atmosphere. Shenstone has a likable wit and a calm, self-assuredness that make him a perfect guide. A romantic interest in plucky Edith parallels the main plot but transcends the genre. One can only hope that there's a sequel for this bright new detective, though knowing Mel, he might go time-travelling again and land in the Victorian Age.