A Capital Mystery, edited by Bernadette Cox and Mike Martin

2025, Ottawa Press and Publishing, 285 pages, $25

Short Stories Anthology, Mystery

Amazon, Indigo, Ottawa Press and Publishing

This is an anthology of 21 short stories of the mystery genre, all by different authors.  All the stories take place in and around Ottawa, from Sparks Street to Greely, and the stories have an element of mystery to them.  I went in expected a more hard-boiled, noir feel to the book, possibly based on the cover art that depicts a man’s silhouette in a trench coat, fedora and pistol, and a woman’s silhouette in the window of the Peace Tower.  Not all the stories fall into that particular genre, not all involve murder or detectives, and most are contemporary, rather than a mid-Century chic. By the very nature of this format, some of the stories are better than others. 

There is one story that takes place during the Bytown years, called “The Incident in Bytown” by Nancy Pawelek, and there were some stories that managed to assemble good characters in less than ten pages, like “Imogen St. Pierre is Dead” by Kathy MacLellan, and “Under the Circumstances” by Lis Angus.  “The Greely Widow’s Secret” by Joanne White managed to set a tense mood and ambiance for the reader to enter.  “The Sparks Street Sapper” by A.E. Pittman moves at an exciting pace.  This book has different authors, with different styles, and different goals to their writing, which makes the book a bit of a challenge, because there are more mood swings than a twelve-year-old with a bag a candy.  This book is best read not in a long-read of multiple stories, but in a one-story-a-night type of format. 

Not all the stories are as engaging as the ones that I’ve singled out in the above paragraph, and while all the stories have an element of mystery to them, the concept of mystery is so open that there doesn’t appear to have a strong connection from one tale to the next. Most of the stories are about 10-15 pages, and meant to be quick reads, but I think that that if the book was a compilation of fewer items, but were longer and more thematically consistent, then the volume would have been a better read. 

I’m giving this a rating of 4/5 stars, because the good stories are quite good.  They show the prowess of some local writers, and while some are 5s, some are also significantly less.  I’m glad that I picked up this book at Indigo, where I met two of the authors, who signed my copy.

★★★★☆