Fall from Grace

During his boat trip to a cove on the Pacific coast, Sergeant Karl Alberg must sift through a variety of leads in order to find the identity of the body that turns up on the beach

The tiny village of Sechelt on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast is the verdant backdrop for Wright's novels of crime and compassion featuring RCMP sergeant Karl Alberg ( A Chill Rain in January ). In this fourth tale, Alberg and his lover, Cassandra, have a short-lived romantic sailing jaunt when Cassandra spots a body falling from a cliff to the beach below. The victim, Steven Grayson, had returned to Sechelt after a decade's absence, harboring a dark secret--somehow related to Bobby Ransome's release from prison. Bobby's homecoming kindles passions in his family, his old girlfriends and their husbands. The palpable force of an unusually scorching heat wave transforms the Pacific Northwest into a Tennessee Williams setting, suitable for the adultery, wife-beating and estrangement that lead to violent emotions and murder. Wright engenders empathy for victim and killer alike. Alberg continues to be a most appealing protagonist--akin to P. D. James's Dalgleish and Ruth Rendell's Wexford, but with a quintessentially Canadian voice.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wright's police detective Karl Alberg solves another murder in the British Columbian village of Sechelt. Here, as in her A Chill Rain in January (1990), Sleep While I Sing, (1986), and The Suspect (1985), Wright has created live-wire characters plugged into unhealthy vibes. Alberg and librarian friend Cassandra are on a boating holiday when the body of Steven Grayson, belted with a money cache of thousands, plummets from a high cliff. Approaching Steven on the cliff, observed only by him and the reader, is handsome, charismatic, unforgettable Bobby Ransome. Returned from eight-plus years in jail for drug dealing, Bobby is the James Dean of Sechelt--sexy, affable, but with eyes that ``kind of glowed empty.'' He's had affairs with two women: Wanda, whom he'd married and divorced while in prison; and Annabelle, now a married mother of three, battered, and once again Bobby's passionate lover. In the August heat, sunburnt Alberg sleuths and grapples for clumsy knots of coincidence, but it's Bobby, the good boy on a bad spin, who inadvertently sets things to rights. Wright's portrait of a fallen angel is bright and appealing, and Alberg, the heavily earthbound cop, is always good company. Although some characters tend to dim when the troublemaker flicks on, still this is an involving psycho-study of exotic varieties of human nastiness with a lively mystery attached. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Canadian author Wright again produces the lucid, forceful prose and unique characters displayed in A Chill Rain in January ( LJ 3/1/90). Staff Sergean Karl Alsberg this time faces the interwoven frailties of several Sechelt (British Columbia) families when a taciturn photographer, lately returned home to stay with his mother, "accidentally" falls to his death from a cliff after meeting local ne'er-do-well/ex-con Bobby Ransome. Evocative imagery, often tied to nature, establishes mood throughout as Ransome moves through people's lives like a seductive undercurrent. Quality material from a talented writer.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.