BWW Reviews: Anthony Bidulka's A FLIGHT OF AQUAVIT

A FLIGHT OF AQUAVIT is the second of the Russell Quant mysteries by Anthony Bidulka. Quant, first introduced to us in AMUSE BOUCHE, is the Philip Marlowe of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, or would be if he were just a touch more noir.

Why isn't he more noir? It's hard to be dark when you're a gay man with a formerly jet-set neighbor, an adorable dog named Barbra, and it's nearly Christmas. It's hard, even when unknown assailants are chasing you down highways, dumping you in snowdrifts in the deep country, or trying to knock you out in Manhattan. It's hard, even when your closeted accountant of a client is absolutely fixated on the idea that he's being blackmailed in Saskatoon by a former one-night stand who's moved to New York to find himself as an actor.

In fact, the only truly gray spot on Quant's horizon is the hair of his sainted Ukrainian mother, who's descended upon him for the Christmas season and shows no signs of not cooking for him every fatty, fried Ukrainian treat that he's given up eating for years. How can you tail suspects, stake out parking lots, rush to Manhattan looking for suspects, and still let your mother know when you'll be home for dinner? It's a conundrum.

A FLIGHT OF AQUAVIT brings back all of Quant's women, particularly spotlighting his fascinating neighbor, Sereena, who accompanies him to New York and shows a previously unknown side of herself in the process. His female lawyer and psychologist friends and co-workers are back, with a side plot about cancer issues, and his mother is no longer a myth, but reality. Bidulka is one of the best authors writing women secondary characters these days - his depictions are neither femmes fatales or harridans; they're human beings as complex and as emotionally layered as his men. Only one female character here feels a bit one-dimensional - his closeted client's wife, who is a one-book character. Her own feelings and motives seem a bit thin as the story progresses, but not so thin that they ever tear.

This isn't a mystery that teaches you much about a world you don't know - you won't put it down imagining that you've learned a great deal about accounting firms, but do you want to? It does take the reader into fashion again, into a private-eye's expense-account tour of Manhattan, and, once again, around Saskatoon. Bidulka's Russell Quant novels are mysteries but they're also love stories, the words of a man who's found endless delight with a love object that others might see as plain or even ignore until they see it through his eyes. You may never have thought of Saskatoon before reading the Quant stories, but you'll want to book a flight there by the time you're through with one. Paris had Proust, Dublin had Joyce; Saskatoon has Bidulka, speaking through Quant.

At nearly 500 pages, there's a lot happening here - there's a lot of writing, but there's plenty going on. Quant's client isn't the only one who isn't who he seems to be to other people, or to the reader. I was convinced for 150 pages that I'd solved the entire mystery completely, only to find myself absolutely wrong. The red herrings here are subtle enough not to scream out "pick me, pick me!", leading me to believe I'd ferreted out a real clue. Silly me. I should have known I wasn't far enough into it to find the real threads. As usual, the real solution is reached relatively fairly, and without Sherlockian leaps of logic among clues you've never seen before, and the loose ends are tucked away neatly in time for Quant's Christmas party. That is, the mystery's clues are tucked away neatly - the personal loose ends of several of his friends and relatives will take some time to resolve. But fortunately for readers, there are multiple Quant novels for us to wade through to find out their resolutions.

The new edition of A FLIGHT OF AQUAVIT is available from Insomniac Press, cover price $19.95.

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