#Blogtour #Review - Whisper of the Seals by Roxanne Bouchard

Whisper of the Seals (Detective Moralès series, 3)
Roxanne Bouchard (trans David Warriner)
Orenda Books, 18 August 2022
Available as: PB, 275pp,  e, audio
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): Whisper of the Seals

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for an advance copy of Whisper of the Seals to consider for review and to Anne Cater for inviting me to join the blogtour, on its last day - I'm honoured to be mooring the vessel at the end of an epic voyage!

With her much-loved Detective Moralès series forging ahead, Roxanne Bouchard has rapidly become one of my favourite crime authors, her Canadian settings refreshingly different from anything I'd read before, the characters vivid and well drawn, the stories rooted in ordinary lives and real dilemmas and the plots satisfyingly twisty. 

Whisper of the Seals is no exception, while definitely taking a turn for the darker. We rejoin Moralès as he's about to take a much-needed break: after he and his wife have finally divorced, he's joining a winter cruise around the coast, with plenty of stops for cross-country skiing. Moralès is joined by several of his police colleagues, of course there's an active case on and of course, case files are aboard the ship. So Moralès is able to distract himself from brooding on how it all went wrong by joining in the (remote) detective work as forensic psychologist Nadine Lauzon attempts to penetrate the mystery of a teenager who has been murdered in Montreal. 

More actively present in the story, so to speak, is fisheries officer Simone Lord, who we also know and love already. She has been posted for the winter to a remote group of islands - Lord regards this as a punishment - to oversee the activities of the resentful fishing community there. 

Lord, who in a creepy episode early on we see as - unknown to her - the object of a Peeping Tom, is called out at short notice to join a trawler embarking on a seal hunt late in the season and in worsening weather. She will be aboard with five less than savoury characters, crewmen whose chequered pasts and varyingly desperate presents are vividly brought to life by Bouchard. Bluntly, it's a crew of chancers and worse, men who have little respect for each other or for Lord, and less for the authority she represents. If you sense trouble ahead, you'd be right. The setup put me in mind, of all books, of Treasure Island, reminding me of young Jim Hawkins surrounded by cutthroats and with nowhere to flee to.

Bouchard expertly draws out the tension as the hunt mounts. Some of the scenes will be troubling for readers who instinctively object to the slaughter of seal pups; while there's nothing gratuitous here, it is a frank portrayal of a real way of life, one that relies on killing. Bouchard allows her characters space to express their perspective, including their resentment of the environmentalists who they believe have unwarrantedly targeted that way of life. Whisper of the Seals is not, at heart, an "issues" book, it is not (directly) about that conflict or trying to convince. But the facts of life in a harsh environment are part of the setting and one we shouldn't overlook. Of course, the killing of seals is, one might think, only a narrow distance from the killing of people, and - as the detectives amiably bicker and flirt on their cruise - Lord begins to suspect that something aboard the Jean-Mathieu is badly amiss.

I loved the portrayal of Lord, who we're familiar with already but who comes to the fore here: her background and self-sufficiency - and the doubt and fear underneath. She works in a very male setting, facing appalling treatment and sexism (including from her own colleagues) but this has only made her more determined to excel - something which is then naturally held against her by men!

The characters of the men aboard are also well delineated, especially the (frankly horrible) Tony McMurray who fixates on Lord as a suitable object for punishment in revenge for past actions by the Fisheries service. Now he has one of their members confined aboard a small trawler, he reckons he can take his time finding a suitable way to work out his resentment... Simone's safety will depend on her wits, her courage and her ability to read the room (or rather the ship).

In the meantime, on the cruise liner, unaware of the danger his colleague is in, Moralès considers his past and his future and ponders new beginnings, his thoughts turning to Simone, giving the story a rather delicious will-they, won't-they aspect with the complex Moralès - also trapped in a ship - forced to face some uncomfortable truths about his life.

The two strands come together in an explosive and tense conclusion that, for me, threw everything up in the air again. There's an ending you absolutely must not let yourself be spoiled on, confirming Bouchard as a masterly orchestrator of plot, character and emotion - and her translator here, David Warriner, as able to render all the ins and outs of what is a complex and nuanced book in arresting and readable English.

I can't wait for Detective Moralès 4.

I would give content warnings here for cruelty to animals, and for threatened rape.

For more information about Whisper of the Seals, see the Orenda website here - and of course in the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Whisper of the Seals directly from Orenda Books, from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

#Blogtour #Review - The Coral Bride by Roxanne Bouchard

The Coral Bride
Roxanne Bouchard (trans David Warriner)
Orenda Books, 12 November 2020
Available as: PB, 424pp, e
Source: Advance review copy provided by the publisher
ISBN: 9781913193324

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for providing me a free copy of The Coral Bride to consider for review and to Anne Cater for inviting me to take part in the book's blogtour.

The Coral Bride takes us to a part of the world I was completely unaware of, the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec, on Canada's eastern coast. It picks up the story of Detective Sergeant Joaquin Moralès from We Were the Salt of the Sea (which I hadn't read, shame on me: now I will) as he investigates the suspicious death of Angel Roberts on her lobster trawler. Forced to locate himself close to the scene of the death, Moralès finds himself in a guest house, run by the enigmatic Corine, out of season. The only guest, he has the run of the place. I rather liked this setting: Morales spreading out his papers in the empty dining room, looking at over the sea as he unravels the case.

That investigation is a taut, satisfyingly complex crime/ mystery in itself. Roberts was closely enmeshed in a network of fishing families with complex rivalries - both personal and financial - all struggling to make a living from the sea amidst environmental crises - the disappearance of the cod - and financial challenges going back generations. There are whispers of poaching, and time was that every trawler's skipper carried a rifle aboard. Once Moralès digs into the investigation he finds an abundance of motives for a murder and a great deal of shifty behaviour - but is still baffled as to whether this wasn't actually a simpler story of suicide. If it was a murder, how could it have been done? If it was a suicide, why?

This part of the story alone would be enough to make this a compelling and page-turning read. But The Coral Bride offers much, much more.

Alongside Moralès's investigation, his own life and family is in turmoil. His wife won't speak to him and he's not sure whether or not his marriage is over. Son Sébastien has arrived home unexpectedly, clearly going through a crisis of his own. We see events from both Joaquin's and Sébastien's viewpoints, so get to appreciate the delicate dynamics between father and son, the past events - and misunderstandings - that have shaped their lives, particularly when it comes to relations with women. Confronted with considerable amounts of misogyny in the local community, the two men are forced to reconsider their own attitudes: Joaquin has a tendency to fixate on a particular feature of a woman's body - a protruding vertebra, an ankle - and Sébastien punts an idea that his father has ruined his life by not teaching him to assert himself with women. 

The reality is that it's hard for women on the Gaspé to make it in a man's world. That's true for fisheries inspector Simone Lord as much as it was for Angel Roberts herself. That's easily said, but oh, to really understand it - and this story - you have to move in to this book, as Joaquin does, and meet its people (Lord, Detective Lefebre who can't be in a room five minutes without beginning a collection of objects, Corine herself, and many more). As well as being a masterful study of a place and way of life (rooting what happened to Angel in a richly portrayed setting) the characters here are spot on - quirky, fully realised, believable and deeply human. I especially loved the way that Bouchard has the Moralès men lapse into cooking - whether alone or working together - either when they are very content or brooding, needing to work through something (either personal issues or the finer points of the case). There's a  physicality to the descriptions of food, of ingredients and how they are put together that is just very satisfying (also, mouth-watering). It's a lovely way to learn about characters and makes me wish there was more cooking (and eating) in writing.

In short - the book really was an absolute joy to read. I don't think I've actually done it justice here. I strongly recommend it and I hope you will read it and love it too.

For more information about The Coral Bride see the publisher's website here - and also the other stops on the blogtour (see the poster below).

You can buy the book from your local high street shop (they need your support right now and many are able to order books and let you collect). Or you can get it online from bookshop.org, from Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyles, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.

OR you can order a SIGNED COPY from Bert's Books - contact bert@bertsbooks.co.uk or call 07960 002056