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the late winter of 2003, two wealthy old
friends are murdered in Vancouver on the same
day, one with a squash racquet and one with a
cricket bat. The motive for the double murder
has revenge written all over it. When the
investigation shifts to Saskatoon, Bill Shmata
must sift the past of these two men for clues
to the double murder.
His quest for
answers takes him to Julie Belanger, a gutsy and
ever-vigillant Metis woman who works in a seniors
home; Bertha Eeling, a local historian with an
obsessive grasp of the past; and Willie Grussen,
an old German limousine driver with secrets of
his own. These three become the investigator's
main windows into the past, the summer of 1951,
when both murder victims were bellmen at the Hochelaga,
a ritzy hotel in the Banff Rockies. Shmata
uncovers a trail of crooked poker games, robbery,
murder. and the rumour of a large cache of valuable
coins.
One of the suspects
is Earl Claney, a retired cabinetmaker stricken
with cancer, old and worn-out before his time.
The other is his brother Joseph, who's been dead
for more than half a century. Or is he?
Or could it be someone who remembers the summer
of '51 as bitterly as Earl Claney? Solving
the mystery for Shmata will require some luck.
The more he uncovers the stories from the summer
of 1951, the more he learns about class warfare
and class resentment in Canada.
This
novel is a train ride into the past, a meditation
on luck, a poker game run amok, a love story,
a treasure hunt, and a first rate mystery.
Released
in October, 2005 from Great Plains Publications
in Winnipeg.
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Critical Response
Luck,
a second novel by Dave Carpenter, is a cleverly
plotted mystery featuring a numismatist named
Bill Shmata and hinging on a very valuable silver
half-dollar coin. We begin in Vancouver, when
a very rich old man is murdered on his way to
play squash. Bishop Montgomery and his best friend,
Lamont Spencer, meet regularly. They have been
friends all their wealthy and pampered lives.
But en route to the squash club, Bishop is waylaid
by a man who smashes him in the head and tells
him Lamont is already dead. The killer smashes
Bishop several more times and leaves him for dead.
But Bishop has just enough time left to take out
his little notepad and write one word: "Therapist."
That's the only clue and no one understands it.
The dead men are connected to a long-ago heist.
A man named Joe Claney stole a golf bag full of
silver coins. His accomplice killed him and he
and the coins went into the river. The body was
never found, but the accomplice was convicted
of murder and is now dead, so who could want to
kill two respectable, rich old men decades later?
Carpenter
has a nice plot and the numismatic link is well
done. Despite the many slashes at the Canadian
class system ... Luck is fun.
-Margaret
Cannon, The Globe and Mail.
Carpenter's
complex mystery ranges from Montreal to Vancouver,
Banff to Saskatoon, with a lot of flashbacks.
We are taken behind the scenes among the summer
employees at a big Banff hotel in the early 1950's.
We get a peek into west-side Saskatoon of the
same era, and even look into the prospects for
the aged of today. The breadth of plots and ideas
[is] vintage Carpenter. Shmata is an endearing
character, and his match-up with librarian Bertha
Eeling, who has been hired to help preserve Saskatoon
Police records for "future investigations,
inquiries and posterity" is a good one. Together
they put a lot of hard work and thought into exploring
and understanding the long-ago murder as a key
to the more recent ones.... A wealth of interesting
characters populates this book, beyond Shmata
and Eeling. There's Letourneau, the crabby cop
who can't get Shmata his job back (there's a beautiful
moment when he discovers the virtue of computers).
There's Earl Claney, who holds the key to the
mystery of why his black sheep brother Joe was
thrown off the bridge, and Julie Belanger, the
personal care home worker who befriends him--
perhaps because of all the time they share smoking
on the patio. Her son Sammy has a small but pivotal
role, and there is nice interplay between Claney
and the boy. They are all real people, moreso
than Bishop Montgomery and Lamont Spencer, whose
upper-class arrogance lies at the heart of Luck,
and who were anything but lucky for anyone else.
We will be seeing more of Bill Shmata and, I hope,
Bertha Eeling, and maybe some of the rest of this
rich cast...
Carpenter
has got his feet thoroughly and happily wet in
mysteries.
-Jenni
Morton, The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.
Luck
is David Carpenter's first mystery, his sixth
novel or novella, by my count, and his 11th published
book. In other words, he knows how to write, and
his foray into the mystery genre is more accomplished
than many a first effort. Don't expect [his investigator]
Bill Shmata to bear any resemblance to Robert
Parker's Spenser, let alone Hawk or any others
of the hardboiled school of mystery writing. He
is a small q, for quiet, Canadian. He's low key,
older, retired from the Saskatoon Police Service
but still called in to help out in certain cases...
This
is a tight little mystery with few twists but
many layers. You may sense the shape of the ending
but you'll want to follow Mr. Shmata to the last
page.
-Jeff
George, Victoria Times-Colonist
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