Welcome to Week CCXVI of ‘Fishing Parkland Shorelines’. Like most of us I am a novice fisherman, loving to fish, but far from an expert. In the following weeks I’ll attempt to give those anglers who love to fish but just don’t have access to a boat, a look at some of the options in the Yorkton area where you can fish from shore, and hopefully catch some fish.
If there is one general constant about August in east central Saskatchewan it’s that fishing gets hard.
There are a few factors at play with that statement.
Firstly August usually means lots of weeds in the water in many lakes, and since weeds tend to grow densest along shorelines, they are a major headache for we who shore fish.
Granted weed beds can be a place predator fish hunt, but constantly cleaning hooks can simply be a tad trying on the patience.
Secondly, there is the general heat. That can make a day on the shore fishing more a sweat than a fun outing.
And that same heat, warms the water to the point fish tend toward lethargy, heading to deeper water where it is cooler. That tends to leave shore fishing to the shoulders of the day, early in the morning, a time my metabolism has shown a long time, general aversion too, or evenings, when it is a tad cooler and predators come out to hunt.
So that brings up what is a fisherman to do should he find himself with a day off in August?
I’m not averse to grabbing a fishing mystery and parking myself in front of a fan, or maybe under the shade of a tree at the park, and reading.
Which brings me to the latest Quill Gordon mystery from Michael Wallace; ‘Not Death, But Love’.
Regular readers may recall I have written of Wallace’s first two books in the Quill Gordon series; ‘The McHenry Inheritance’ released in 2012, and ‘Wash Her Guilt Away’ from 2014.
Not Death was released last year.
Wallace is a former daily newspaper editor and public relations consultant, living in Central California. According to the book bio, “he is a lifelong fan and student of mystery novels and a long-time fly fisherman” and “he publishes a weekly essay blog Wednesdays at outofglendale.blogspot.com and may be contacted through the author page of his website, quillgordonmystery.com”
Often the writer is the harshest critic for a book, but in this case Wallace likes the progression from book one to ‘Wash Her Guilt Away’. In an interview on his second release hue explained the hurdle.
“The first book, ‘The McHenry Inheritance’, had a lower bar to clear. If the first in a series can establish a character, a premise, a style, a tone, and a sense of narrative competence, the author has done all right,” he said. “Then you’re supposed to learn from it and get better.
“In the second book I tried to improve specifically in the areas of character development and dialogue, plus making the story more complex.”
And that brings us to Not Death, But Love.
With the words, “You look like an honest man,” retired English teacher Charlotte London approaches Quill Gordon in a small-town café and gives him a manila envelope for safekeeping. That night, a fire destroys her house, her body is found in the ruins, and Gordon is no longer an investor on a fishing trip, but the unwitting custodian of her family history and personal journal from 25 years ago. When the politically sensitive sheriff seems content to call the fire an accident, Gordon and his friend Peter Delaney team up with an aging-hippie newspaper editor, a librarian who talks too much, a factoid-obsessed local historian, and Charlotte’s best friend to investigate her death. Is the critical clue in the family history, which digs into a controversial land development and suggests her father’s “accidental” death may not have been so accidental? Or is it in her journal, where, amid reflections on Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina, Charlotte chronicles an illicit love affair? Something in those documents is worth killing for, and the investigation becomes increasingly personal (and perilous) for Gordon and his associates, who need a solution before one of them becomes the next corpse, details the book’s back cover.
So how does this book rate in terms of fishing mysteries of which I have read a growing list?
In some respects it is perhaps the truest to life of the three Quill Gordon books. Gordon, and a cadré of friends set out to prove wrong doing in the apparent fire death of a well-loved teacher, in the process finding a mystery which seems to stretch back a quarter of a century.
The group follows a book of small clues, finding the occasional kernel of truth within the chaff. In time the fog of mystery clears.
While this is no doubt how an investigation takes place, an interview here, a dusty library file there, it made for a bit of a slow storyline.
The group was making baby steps, but as a reader I at times found myself struggling to stay interested.
The penultimate scene was less tense than perhaps it could have been. There was a chance to add a death into the mix at that point, if not early to add some tension.
The fly rod on the deck was a nice touch for fisherfolk, but you saw it coming as Gordon’s tool of escape.
And when Gordon’s buddy leaves him in the lurch at the big moment, there is no consequence for that decision. The next chapter they are still buds. It was a bit too-glossed over.
Still, as a summer read, it was relatively quick, with good insights into the mundane reality of seeking the answer to a mystery.
Later this summer Quill Gordon is scheduled to return too, which is good news as Wallace is set to release ‘The Daughters of Alta Mira.’
You can follow Wallace at www.outofglendale.blogspot.ca or try www.quillgordonmystery.com (although the site does seem to currently be experiencing some difficulties.
