The Mysteries

By Robert Mcgill

Book Overview

A twenty-eight-year-old writer bursts onto the scene with this virtuoso debut novel in which a woman's disappearance unlocks the dark secrets of a small town "Secrets had a way of growing inside you. It became difficult to breathe sometimes, a struggle in the company of other people to pretend that all was well. Mike would never forgive her if he knew what she'd done." - from The Mysteries With literary finesse and an assured eye for the complexities of our most human desires and failings, Robert McGill has created a multi-layered, utterly engaging novel set in a small Ontario community in which, it seems, everyone has something to hide. Alice Pederson has been missing for almost two years. Her husband, Mike, and their children must carry on despite grief and the frustrations of a police investigation that has hit a dead end. Then, when remains are found along a nearby shoreline, a series of coincidences emerges: young Daniel Barrie returns suddenly from school in England; local former hockey coach Stoddart Fremlinis arrested in connection with Alice's murder, then crashes his small plane and escapes across a dark field; Rocket DeWitt, once the town hockey star and among the last people to see Alice alive, abruptly leaves town; Bronwen Ferry, the insurance investigator, pursues Alice's husband's claim for reasons of her own; and something out in the bush is making grisly attacks on farm animals. Meanwhile, Native groups are protesting the building of a henge on the grounds of Cam Usher's wildlife park, an area they know to be a sacred burial site. Adding to the disquiet, an unknown traveller arrives one night carrying a weather-beaten notebook, with instructions to give it only to Alice Pederson. Weaving back and forth in time, and told from the distinct perspectives ofits cast of memorable and eccentric characters, The Mysteries hums with tension and vividly evokes the tangled web of relationships within a small town. Robert McGill is a hugely talented and inventive new writer who has the ability to draw us into the world he has created and hold us, rapt, until the very last page.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771055226
• ISBN13: 9780771055225
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 352 Pages

Customer Reviews

This town is worth visiting

Robert McGill gives us a fully realized small town atmosphere in his debut novel The Mysteries. Anyone who has spent time on the Grey Bruce Peninsula in Ontario (Canada) will immediately recognize the surroundings, but for those who don't they will feel compelled to stay for a visit. They're all here- the town dentist, the mayor, the pack-rat, the former hockey star and several characters who have clearly escaped from the big city for their own sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden, reasons. A disappearance- and possible murder- brings the town into focus for us. Chapters peel away the layers between various stories about the night in question, and the haunting memories that remain. The book is strongest when painting the various scenes where most of the action occurs- the animal park owned by a hippy trying to make ends meet, the dishevelled house of the man left behind by his wife's disappearance, the crowded apartment where the moods of a student and his mothers (yes, same sex couples inhabit small towns too!) conflict and weave their own story. If the book has a flaw it is that in trying to paint this complex town the reader must grapple with many viewpoints making transitions a bit choppy. One narrator's voice is constantly in italics, which was a technique I could have done without. That said, if you give this book time to cook the results are worth waiting for. The conclusion is something I never would have expected, yet believable, and that is increasingly hard to achieve in this world of many mystery writers and a thousand CSI-type shows. The author combines the mystery-writing psychology of a Peter Robinson or P.D. James with the literary flare of a Yann Martel. This is a young voice I look forward to watching develop.