Amateurs!
All Rise for Murder
by Roz Nay
Toronto: Viking, 2026
$26.95/ 9781037801877
Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy
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Nelson writer Roz Nay (The Offing) has turned her attention from the hard-edged works that have earned her such accolades as France’s Douglas Kennedy Prize for best foreign thriller toward another currently popular sub-genre of the mystery category. The post-pandemic era has seen the popularity of book series by Canadians that could as easily be classified as “comedic crime,” as “cozy mystery.” Ian Ferguson and Will Ferguson, for instance, have brought us the Miranda Abbott series (including Killers on the First Page) and Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti’s Quill & Packet Mystery series centres on the exploits of reporter Cat Conway in small town southwestern Ontario.
Nay’s All Rise for Murder, book one of the Madam Clerk Mystery Series, shares with these series the cozy hallmarks of amateur sleuthing and a charmingly eccentric small town setting. However, the tone is so light, the focus on winning characters with intriguing backstories is so dominant, and the approach to crime is so, well, unserious, that these works warrant a category one step lighter than cozy mystery—the comedic crime story. In fact, the reader may well find herself letting any deep dissection of criminal transgression take a back seat to these elements.
Three generations of women co-pilot the plot of All Rise for Murder. Maude Kirby, newly hired court clerk in West Elk, BC, has returned to her hometown (15-year-old daughter Rhette in tow) in desperation. Fleeing a philandering husband with whom she and Rhette had travelled the world in his position with the Dutch embassy, Maude lands in her childhood home—owned and occupied by her mother, Val, proprietor of an upscale consignment clothing store. Unskilled in any occupation apart from wife-of-an-important-man, Maude embraces the clerical position but finds herself distracted by what she sees as the wrongful conviction of teen Levi for the murder of the local gym owner.
Many mysteries aside from the central crime capture the reader’s attention, and the pasts of Maude and Val are rife with enigma: who is Maude’s father? Will Rhette be tempted away from quotidian West Elk by the cosmopolitan lifestyle of her father? Did Val really have an exotic place in French haute couture, and, if so, does it have anything to do with her current circumstance as an apparent victim of an online predator?
As the three women work together and separately to compile and eventually interrogate their ever-changing list of suspects, their respective adjustments to their new circumstances are at once comic and compelling. Rhette is adaptable, accepting the quiet Main Street that is occasionally a social hub for elk (and little else). While she makes a promising male friend, she remains restless and lonely. Rhette shares with Val an independent streak, which results in a hilarious incident in the school cafeteria that, in turn, results in a suspension that buys her time for crime-solving. (Nay has put her years as a high school teacher to good use.)
Maude is out of her comfort zone in more ways than one; not only does the job present a steep learning curve, but also the figures from her past that re-enter her present life add complications—most notably, the veterinarian and chain saw artist who stood her up in her youth and who may lead her to the killer. Val, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Catherine O’Hara’s Moira Rose of Schitt’s Creek fame, naively plunges deeper and deeper into online and real-life situations that seem destined to backfire spectacularly.
Plus, each of the crime solvers is hiding something from the others.
Nay captures the small-town BC milieu—down to the clothing and footwear—well. A host of characters—a clueless judge who fakes his ancestry, an ultra-efficient clerk, and an obsessive clothing entrepreneur chief among them—abet or, more often, confound the efforts of the trio. Risky midnight reconnaissances, ill-fated prison visits, red herrings, potential job losses, poorly executed interrogations, heartbreaking texts, and even anonymous and face-to-face death threats aside, the crime-solving squad are undeterred in their fight for justice for Levi (though they may get temporarily distracted).
At West Elk’s distinctive annual celebration—the Mud Ball—the townspeople congregate, and, conveniently, there’s significant progress on the crime-solving front. In typical mystery fashion, the plot reveals that events—and people—are often not what they appear to be. I must admit to a few surprises about the identities of good guys and bad guys—not to mention of the culprit. As importantly, the three women reveal their secrets to one another, burning “side questions” about the trio are answered, and we are well set up for book two.
Of course, hilarious mystery novels are not an invention of the post-Covid era, but, given the seemingly instant transition the world has made from a pandemic to geopolitical chaos, this round has come at an opportune time. And, as much as any other country, Canada needs more humour. Nay’s Kirby Crime Crackers are a promising addition to the roster of comedic detective female gumshoes.
*
Ginny Ratsoy is Professor Emerita at Thompson Rivers University. Her scholarly publications have focused on Canadian fiction, theatre, small cities, third-age learning, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. She currently spends her time reading, writing, and teaching. Her latest course for the Kamloops Adult Learners Society was “Women in Canadian Theatre.” She is delighted to have written programme notes for the 50th anniversary season of Western Canada Theatre. [Editor’s note: Ginny has reviewed recent books by Kirstie Hudson and Monique Polak, Nikki Bergstresser, and S.E. Hume, Uma Krishnaswami, Kirsten Pendreigh, Annette LeBox, Leigh Joseph, Veronica Woodruff, L. R. Wright, L.R. Wright, Jennifer Cooper, Sara Cassidy, Kallie George, and Bill Richardson for BCR.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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