Martin Michaud

Martin Michaud tries too hard and accomplishes too little in this police thriller. It’s disappointing because I wanted to enjoy it. It’s set in Montreal and evokes many details of the city in a realistic way. It touches on contemporary issues, such as the corrosive effects of the repression of the Quebec independentist movement, political corruption and continuing interference by the RCMP. It even has an insider’s view of realistic police work. I would have been happy if it had handled any of these with reasonably plausible characters.
Instead, Michaud tries to hook readers with tortuous murders depicted from the victim’s point of view, and bizarre plot points like the bow and arrow shooting in a Montreal cemetery or the CIA’s brainwashing experiments carried out in Montreal in order to avoid legal scrutiny. This is catchy plotting that draws the action from high point to high point, as if following the advice in a manual for successful detective thrillers, but it feels artificial and manipulative.
Worse, Michaud creates thinly drawn characters who over-react to everything in their lives. With characters of greater depth, I might have been drawn into the rest of the story, which has its intrigue. But it seems that each of the central characters has one quirk that becomes a defining feature. The lead detective is dealing (badly) with a fatal error from his past and its repercussions in his personal and professional life. His partner is a junk food junkie. Another detective is gnomic while the chief is supportive as he struggles with his wife’s cancer. These could be colourful details if there were more to the characters, but there isn’t. The characters are uniformly flat cartoons.
Apparently, Michaud is a popular writer in Quebec and perhaps his characters have more depth in their original language. I can imagine that they may well have lost something in translation, particularly as a lot of the characterization comes from the dialogue. The plot conforms to the genre conventions, and Michaud has won fiction awards in both French and English. So perhaps I’d concede that personal taste is a factor here – except that those characters (in translation) just don’t have the substance of, say, a well-crafted English police drama. (Is it fair to compare a translated novel to a well written English drama? Perhaps not.)
Maybe I just don’t appreciate the modern detective genre, but it seems to me that the mid-century novels of Phillip Marlow or Dashiell Hammett are just better written, even with their exaggerated language and convoluted plots. And the genre fiction of John Le Carré never leaves me thinking that the characters are flat cartoons, even when they are predictable types from his repertoire. Ultimately, I’m just not drawn to spend any more time with Michaud’s characters, even if there are aspects of his novels that are intriguing.… (altro)

I think I just finished my first Quebec noir novel.

Set in Montreal, the book opens with the kidnapping, torture, and killing of Judith Harper, a psychiatric researcher. Then there’s the delivery of a cryptic, threatening note to a prominent lawyer, Nathan Lawson, who goes into hiding after reading it. And then André Lortie, a homeless man in possession of both Harper and Lawson’s wallets, commits suicide. And that’s just the beginning of the body count. Victor Lessard and his partner Jacinthe Taillon lead the investigation which has them looking into events which took place fifty years earlier, in the 1960s.

Though this is the first Victor Lessard novel translated into English, I subsequently learned that it is actually the third book in the series. Why do publishers do this??!! There are repeated references to Lessard’s backstory and another important case that left the detective scarred. I assume this information and case are the focus of the previous two books.

Victor is middle-aged, a divorced father of two. Barely hanging on to sobriety, he suffers from anxiety and depression and fits of rage. He is described as “tortured, surly, and stubborn.” He is romantically involved with Nadja, a police officer twelve years his junior. In some ways, he reminds me of Harry Hole in the series by Jo Nesbø.

Victor’s traumatic family history, intelligence, and determination make him a sympathetic character, but his partner Jacinthe has virtually no appealing qualities. She is insensitive and totally tactless. She is crude, mouthy, and belligerent, and a poster child for police brutality. She is also a caricature of the doughnut-loving cop because she is food obsessed. Her main skill is her ability to drive through Montreal’s snow-covered roads. I did find the repeated references to her eating to be annoying and the many descriptions of her large size to be distasteful.

The plot is very complex with a lot of storylines and characters. It is easy to get lost because characters are sometimes identified by first name, sometimes by surname, sometimes by nickname, and sometimes by job title. At over 500 pages, the book could use some editing; certainly, the subplot involving Victor’s son is rather tangential. The pace is fast with lots of action, but the ending is somewhat unsatisfying because it relies on a conspiracy theory and involves a long-winded confession.

Interspersed throughout are short references to key moments in Quebec history (FLQ October crisis, 1980 referendum) when the province was struggling with its identity. There is supposed to be a connection to a character who is also searching for a sense of self, but I found it a bit of a stretch. What also irked me is that, though there are French-Canadian characters, there is no French dialogue. If it were not for the local colour, the reader might think the novel was set in any city. Apparently, the French title of the book is Je me souviens, the official motto of Quebec. That phrase has much more meaning in French so much is lost in translation.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the book; it’s just that I would have preferred a more amenable partner for Victor, a judicious editing of unnecessary plot elements, and some use of the French language. The use of a conspiracy theory as a linchpin to the murders really bothered me.

Note: Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).… (altro)