Writing the Thoughts of Others

   It’s wonderful when authors, especially younger ones, step outside themselves.
   In her new novel, Broken Harbor, Tana French’s main character is Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, a detective on the Dublin, Ireland murder squad. Kennedy is an older, hard-bitten and sometimes reflective cop. Early in the book he does some cranky old guy commentary. Here’s part of it:
   “I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went to church, we ate family suppers around the table . . . we all knew exactly where we stood and we didn’t break the rules lightly.  If that sounds like small stuff to you, if it sounds boring or old-fashioned or uncool, think about this: people smiled at strangers, people said hello to neighbours, people left their doors unlocked and helped old women with their shopping bags, and the murder rate was scraping zero. Sometime since then, we started turning feral. Wild got into the air like a virus, and it’s spreading. Watch the packs of kids roaming inner-city estates, mindless and brakeless as baboons, looking for something or someone to wreck. Watch the businessmen shoving past pregnant women for a seat on the train, using their 4x4s to force smaller cars out of their way, purple-faced and outraged when the world dares to contradict them. Watch the teenagers throw screaming stamping tantrums when, for once, they can’t have it the second they want it. Everything that stops us being animals is eroding, washing away like sand, going and gone.”
   Crowds of people, mainly older folks, share Scorcher Kennedy’s feelings. What’s exciting is that a writer, not yet 40 years old, is able and willing to deliver social commentary not expected from her own generation. That’s what makes a winning writer: the ability to gather and transmit the thoughts of different groups of people.
   French is a powerhouse descriptive writer. Her descriptions are fresh and alive - planets away from most of today’s murder mystery fiction. I didn’t find her first novel, Into the Woods, all that memorable but that might just be me. Her ability as a writer, and her growing popularity, are beyond question.
   That’s a wonderful thing considering the illiterate junk, like Fifty Shades of Crap or whatever it’s called, now dominating the book markets. 

A Mystery Now 95 Years Old

         Ninety-five years ago this week the Great Canadian Mystery began. On July 8, 1917, Canadian painter Tom Thomson went missing in Ontario’s bush country. To this day, no one knows for sure how he died, or what exactly happened to his body after his bush country burial.

          Thomson was a moody bachelor who spent much of his time in Algonquin Park, canoeing, fishing and painting. His art work always is associated with the Group of Seven, founded after his death, because all these artists shared a vision of distinct Canadian art connected to the Canadian landscape.

          On the morning of July 8, Thomson went fishing on Canoe Lake in Algonquin and disappeared. His body was found floating in the lake eight days later. A quick investigation ruled his canoe had overturned, or he had fallen out of it.

          There have been decades of speculation that he was murdered by a summer resident from Buffalo, New York, or died the night before in an accident during a drinking party.

          It was a hot week and Thomson’s body was buried almost immediately at the lake because it was decaying rapidly. His brother George was notified and he sent an undertaker to the lake to disinter his brother’s body and return it to his parents’ home near Owen Sound for burial. There is speculation that the undertaker, who went to the Canoe Lake gravesite at night, did not dig up the body and sent an empty coffin back to George Thomson.

          It is a fascinating story that has intrigued Canadians for almost a century. People continue to try to figure out how Thomson died, and whether his remains lie at Canoe Lake, or near Owen Sound.

          More on the Thomson mystery can be found in my book: Tom Thomson: The Life and Mysterious Death of the Famous Canadian Painter, available at Amazon or wherever you buy books.