Thimblerig

Hot lead, cold cash and a city full of suspects! Detective D.B. Murphy has his work cut out for him when Everett Hall turns up dead. Not only did the con man steal from the City of Owen Sound and many of its wealthier residents, he left a trail of broken hearts in his wake. Was he killed for love or money? When D.B. starts to ask, hot lead is the answer in The Thimblerig.

The Thimblerig was written during The 3-Day Novel Marathon for Literacy. Held once a year in Owen Sound, the event is a fundraiser for the Adult Literacy Program of the Owen Sound and North Grey Union Public Library.

Rave Reviews for The Thimblerig

A cure for bad temper, The Toronto Star, Sunday September 26, 1999

By Jack Batten (Whodunit)

The grumpiness induced by reading superstar Patricia Cornwell's latest bad-tempered Kay Scarpetta tale is eased in a refreshing detective series set and produced in Owen Sound

Is it just me or does reading a Patricia Cornwell crime novel make everybody else grumpy too? Kay Scarpetta, Cornwell's sleuth figure, may be a brilliant coroner, but she functions in a constant state of rage, and it's contagious. Scarpetta is forever pissing off her bratty niece, Lucy, who gets under the skin of the world's most foul-mouthed police detective, Marino, who antagonizes practically every other character, and after a few chapters of these angrily dysfunctional people, I find myself yelling at the neighbour's kids and looking for a dog to kick.

Cornwell's latest book, aptly titled Black Notice (Putnam, 415 pages, $36.99), opens with Scarpetta in a foul mood - she describes her life in the second sentence as "stark and without song" - and she never gets any chirpier than that. What particularly puts her in the pits is a decaying body that turns up in a cargo container on board a freighter from Belgium that has docked in the Port of Richmond, Virginia, Scarpetta's home turf. Some 200 pages later, Scarpetta is still doing the autopsy on the body while the plot has meandered down many thorny paths - which have done nothing except bury Kay and the reader in gloom and angst.

The autopsy results eventually get Scarpetta on to an internatinal serial killer - gee, what a surprise - whom the irascible trio of Scarpetta, Lucy and Marino finally nail in the book's last pages. It's true that Black Notice, as with all Cornwell novels, is loaded with grisly minutiae from the morgue that you aren't likely to pick in other crime stories. But that aside - quite far aside, thanks - what is it about Cornwell's oeuvre that makes it the stuff of instant popularity? Black Notice has already followed its predecessors to a spot high on the bestseller lists, and I don't get it. Do readers enjoy feeling crabby? Is that the final explanation? Has Cornwell simply cornered the market on bad-tempered masochism?

On the other hand, The Thimblerig by Richard J. Thomas (Ginger Press, 215 pages, $8.99) is a book to put a smile on your face. It's not that the novel is brilliantly written or ingeniously plotted - too slight for either of those - but everything else about it, including its source, maybe especially its source, is the material for gentle risibility.

The book's central character is D.B. Murphy, a private eye in Owen Sound, Ont. Yes, Owen Sound. And did I mention the year is 1923? D.B. is a regular Sam Spade about town. Packs a gat. Keeps a bottle of hootch handy (illicit stuff since Prohibition is on). Got an eye for the skirts. And dogged about sleuthing.

D.B.'s current case involves the murder of a mysterious figure who's come recently to Owen Sound. (Do the locals call it the Sound, I wonder? Or Owen for short?) Almost anybody might have knocked off this newcomer because, in his short time in town, he revealed himself to be both a con man and breaker of female hearts. That makes the many losers to the man in either finance or romance all candidates for killer.

Things get even trickier when the autopsy (presented minus the gore of a Cornwell novel) discloses the victim has been poisoned (apple pie), stabbed (a filleting knife), shot (.22), sapped (a billy) and drowned (down by the mill dam). Somebody, or somebodies, really wanted this guy dead. But hold tight, D.B. is on the case.

Richard J. Thomas, the author of this divertissement - this drollery, this jocosity, this whoopee - is billed in the book's biographical note as a "member of the Owen Sound and North Grey Union Public Library, a columnist with the Owen Sound Tribune and an award-winning preserve maker."

Everybody in town is apparently a triple threat. The Thimblerig's publisher, Ginger Press, is also a book store and a coffee bar, and is doing nicely enough at the retail end to generate a rumour that Indigo and Chapters are planning to erect twin 12-storey towers in the heart of Owen Sound's financial district.

"Thimblerig is the third D.B. Murphy mystery we've published," reports Maryann Hogbin, the head of the Ginger Press juggernaut, from Owen Sound. "The first two are the most stolen books in the senior English department at our high school."

Thomas, as well as inventing the characters for his Murphy books, sells each of them - to the highest bidder. It's a fundraising gimmick. Owen Sounders sponsor D.B. and the folks who turn up in the novels, and Thomas directs the purchase money to the town's adult literacy program.

If Patricia Cornwell adopted the same practice with her novels, how much do you suppose Kay Scarpetta would be worth? Not more than a bloody loonie maybe?

Jack Batten's Whodunit appears every two weeks [in the Toronto Star].