E-Book: "Seven Days Dead" by John Farrow (Trevor Ferguson)

E-Book: Seven Days Dead by John Farrow (Trevor Ferguson), 2016, ebook from Wisconsin Digital Library.

AKA "Cinq-Mars Goes on Vacation".

Emile Cinq-Mars has retired from life as a Montreal Police Detective. (Inspector? I cannot recall the correct work title.) He and his wife Sandra are still having marriage trouble. Emile can be a difficult man to get along with and his wife's work with horses demands a lot of hours every day. They take a drive east to New Brunswick for a two week summer vacation on Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy.

Much geography writing ensues and I spent a fair amount of time on my computer tablet trying skip back and forth between the novel and a maps program. Of course there is a murder as well but the island is a character of it's own.

Grand Manan has a year-round population of 2,400. There are no bridges or tunnels to the island and permanent residents are either in fishing, kelp harvesting, or tourism. Consequently the island is tight knit and most people know one another. When the island's richest resident - and biggest asshole - dies most of the people are quite glad. Even the dead guy's daughter.

Dead Guy's daughter gladly left her awful father and the island years ago. She braves a thunderstorm and dangerous boat trip after he telephoned her to say he was about to die. Well, the death of a deathly ill man is no big deal for the police until the the eviscerated body of a local Priest is found on an island high point.

Dead Priest was the last person to see Dead Guy alive. The island's police force is made of a rank rookie Mountie and a PTSD riddled Mountie out to pasture on low-key Grand Manan. New Brunswick's top cop knows CInq-Mars is on vacation there and has the locals ask Emile for help.

Things happen. Cinq-Mars has a big, hawkish nose and that nose is excperienced in sniffing out crime and crooks. He agrees to snoop around and does so. Emile is a talker, he gets people to open up and his memory and perceptions make him successful. He travels the island and we learn about the locals, the smaller communities on the island, the local way of doing things, so on, so forth.

The mystery plotting is not so fantastic. Sure, I liked it the murder mystery angle but that's not the point of the story.