Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
When a freighter smuggling illegal immigrants from Southeast Asia sinks offshore, Tofino coroner Elias McCann finds himself at the heart of another mystery.
Among the survivors of the tragedy is a young girl, whom Elias and his girlfriend, Vhanna, find themselves trying to protect from unknown kidnappers. Meanwhile, a relative of Vhanna's turns up among the immigrants, bringing back memories of her dark past and the Khmer Rouge. As the plot unfolds, compelling questions are raised: most importantly, who is responsible for the immigrants being here, and what do they want with Vhanna's cousin? .
As I shared in my first post for Murder is Everywhere last week, one of the things that prodded me towards going from keen crime reader to someone involved in crime fiction as a reviewer and features writer (then awards judge, event chair, festival founder, etc) was attending a Crime Writers Canada event at Vancouver Library around 13 years ago. At that event along with the likes of Bill Deverell and Lou Allin, I met Mark Zuehlke, a noted Canadian historian who also wrote an interesting mystery trilogy centred on a community coroner on Vancouver Island.
In the days following that event I bought HANDS LIKE CLOUDS, the first Elias McCann mystery, from a cool wee bookshop near Victoria on Vancouver Island, and enjoyed the read on my return home, particularly the quirky characters and vividly evoked setting.
Unfortunately Zuehlke didn't write any further mysteries after the first three (published 2000-2004), though he's continued to write - being hugely prolific when it comes to non-fiction books about Canadian military history. So his Elias McCann series is a little harder to find nowadays, and I was stoked when I nabbed a copy of the second book, CARRY TIGER TO MOUNTAIN a while back (I think on my last trip to Canada a couple of years before the pandemic). Recently I dived in.
The things I remembered enjoying were there again: Elias McCann is an engaging main character who is surrounded by some interesting people and lives an atypical life among rugged, rural landscapes.
Having been written in the early 2000s, before the proliferation of some of the technology that pervades our lives nowadays (social media, smartphones), there's something rather nice about reading an old-fashioned mystery that doesn't get too techy or forensic-y - not that those things can't work well too.
Another interesting note for me was that although CARRY TIGER TO MOUNTAIN is almost 20 years old now, some of the underlying issues Zuehlke touches on or explores throughout the mystery - such as immigration, human trafficking, racism and xenophobia - feel all-too current and relevant. Both in terms of the varying attitudes of everyday people and the focus and actions of those in authority as they play politics with peoples' lives. The more things change, as they say ...
As readers, we're dropped into the action early on as Elias McCann, who's fallen into the job of local Tofino coroner despite his lack of medical skills, is called to the scene of a shipwreck. A freighter from Asia that was smuggling people along with its other cargo has run aground, crashing bodies and the barely-survivors against the rocks of the Vancouver Island coastline. A frigid hellscape.
A tough situation gets further complicated by the discovery of a young girl, and a wounded man who claims to be a cousin of Vhanna, Elias' girlfriend, bringing to the surface the trauma Vhanna survived and escaped from as a Cambodian child living through the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Zuehlke's writing flows well and the mystery unfolds with some nice touches of character and setting. Once again I felt transported to the Gulf Islands off the British Columbia coastline, and was made to care about the characters and the perils they faced. While Elias is the central character, in many ways this felt a little like 'Vhanna's book' in a way, with the family connections and having to confront aspects of her own past, as well as the prejudice she'd felt and still had to deal with sometimes as an Asian immigrant to a country that has a reputation for friendliness and tolerance but can still be cold and unwelcoming to newcomers - particularly from Asia or the Middle East - making a new life there.
Overall, I thought CARRY TIGER TO MOUNTAIN was in intriguing, enjoyable mystery that was worth the read, and left me with the feeling I'll have to nab myself a copy of the third Elias McCann adventure, SWEEP LOTUS, at some point too.
Craig Sisterson is a lapsed Kiwi lawyer who now lives in London and writes for magazines and newspapers in several countries. He’s interviewed hundreds of crime writers and talked about the genre on national radio, top podcasts, and onstage at festivals on three continents. Craig's been a judge of the Ned Kelly Awards, McIlvanney Prize, is founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards and co-founder of Rotorua Noir. His book SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, was published in 2020.
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