Death on the Canal by Allan McCarville
2022, MacCearbhaill Independent Publishing, 336 pages, $21.99
Historical fiction, murder-mystery
This is a murder mystery, following Detective Jacques Charleboi to unravel the story behind a body found on the Rideau Canal in Spring of 1870. The story winds through Lowertown, involving an Irish benevolent society, as a cross between the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Molly Maguires. A Pip-like orphan is the last to see the victim, and the Irish mob seeks him out to prevent anyone from learning that they’re funding Fenians across the border and embezzling along the way.
The book was very well researched, and you could tell how much attention McAllan put into making sure that the story was devoid of anachronisms or error. As someone who’s often nit-picky about this sort of thing, I was pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the background. Not only were the physical geographies accurate, but the characters were not modern-minded people inhabiting the past, which was welcomed.
Unfortunately, the story itself wasn’t that interesting, and the pacing after the first dozen chapters seemed to fall apart. The author’s strength was in his understanding of the background and history of the time and place, and then opted not to lean into that and make scenery and setting a visceral part of the book, but to rely on a fairly traditional murder-mystery structure, that could have been the script to an episode of Murdock Mysteries.
I’ve given a rating of three stars because the setting and politics of the day was well-conveyed. The reader can walk away from this book with a fair understanding of Ottawa in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. The story and the characters were what dragged the book down.
★★★☆☆
