Crime and consequence

Barcelona Red Metallic
by Christine Cosack

Toronto: Second Story Press, 2024
$22.95 / 9781772603910

Reviewed by Trish Bowering

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If you head northwest from Vancouver, then take a ferry and disembark onto a sleepy coastal road and drive a little, you may find yourself in the small, fictional Sunshine Coast town of Oyster Hill. That’s the setting for Southern Vancouver Island resident Christine Cosack’s debut novel Barcelona Red Metallic. It is in this beautiful coastal setting, on a quiet, early morning, that young Lena will hop on her new bike and ride joyfully down the middle of sleepy streets until a shocking accident takes her life. 

The sad event marks the opening of Cosack’s novel, which may seem a standard police procedural by description but offers an extra layer of depth that examines deeper truths of the human condition.  

From the first pages, Cosack sets the tension high with the vehicular hit-and-run in Oyster Hill: a young child loses her life in an opening passage that had me turning the pages with a sense of dread. Giving space on the page for the voice of the perpetrator ramps up the tension from the beginning of the novel and had me wondering who the killer could be. With a limited number of suspects, it wasn’t hard to narrow down the list, but Cosack did keep me guessing for much of the novel.

The young victim’s bicycle bears faint marks of bright red paint determined by investigators to be Barcelona Red Metallic, a shade used on particular Toyota vehicles. It’s this tiny piece of crime-scene evidence that leads RCMP collision analyst Luci Miller to one Oyster Bay family, headed by matriarch Jo Nelson, as she methodically follows up on each and every matching red Toyota.  

Luci is a competent investigator, but is still finding her footing in the vehicular investigation unit in Vancouver after a rocky first few years serving as a rookie in Dawson City. When Luci visits Jo’s home to assess the front bumper of Jo’s car, she immediately feels a kinship with the older woman. As soon as Luci expresses some misgivings about Jo’s evasive answers, however, Jo turns defensive and Luci feels taken aback. 

This interaction propels Luci’s investigation forwards, and also illustrates her still-developing sense of competence as a detective. Cosack presents a narrative that begins by delving into the relationship between the older Jo and the fledgling RCMP officer. She revisits this theme throughout the novel. Even so, Luci struck me as a somewhat bland presence, without the intense internal conflict that builds depth in a character; and the hit-and-run investigation itself–though interesting–was not the star of this novel.

In contrast, it is Jo’s psyche that is most compelling here, propelling the book forwards and giving the book its satisfying edge. Her character shoulders the bulk of the conflict in the novel, and harbours most of the secrets. Jo is shaped by her experience of motherhood as a parent to Oliver, who was born with cystic fibrosis. When he was born, Jo and her husband Paul were told that Oliver may only live to 26 years old, and from that point on, Jo became her son’s advocate and medical decision maker, going head-to-head with doctors and the system to keep her son alive. This meant being in control as much as she could and preparing for every eventuality. 

In flashbacks, Cosack takes time to develop the story of Jo and Oliver over the years of his medical treatment for CF, giving glimpses of dire emergencies that keep mom Jo on the ready. This backstory is educational and empathetic. I could feel Jo’s adrenaline kick in when Oliver’s breath became too laboured: 

“Up, down. Up, down. Repeat. Each loop, twist, and hill on the roller coaster repeated over and over, each time with a different mindset. Sometimes you are full of can-do attitude, you believe in yourself and your inner strength to survive, other times it catches you unawares and pummels you through all kinds of hell.” 

These passages serve to not only give a snapshot of living as a family with chronic illness–daily vigilance punctuated by crisis–but also allowed me to understand Jo’s reemergent hyper-vigilance when her family comes under suspicion for the MVA years later.

Control is a hard thing to give up, but Jo and Paul have retired to Oyster Bay now that the adult Oliver has a healthy set of transplanted lungs, and a family of his own. Despite Oliver featuring heavily in the flashbacks, he remains a background presence in the present-day story. Again, Cosack centres Jo as the heart of this novel, as she’s beginning to enjoy her freedom from always worrying about her son and now trying to bond with grandson Nico. She’s a renowned artist, crafting beautiful drawings of lichen, many of which resemble lung tissue. I loved this aspect of the book, and could almost see the colourful, green-hued illustrations as Cosack described them on the page: “…most of the wall space is given to lichen’s predominant colour: green, from light mint, pistachio, and spring shades to deeper juniper and forest hues. Green is the colour of calm, and over forty years, Jo has perfected the art of imbuing it with light.” 

Green is peaceful and healing as a contrast to red: the colour of bloody sputum when your child’s lungs are bleeding, the colour of a red Toyota, and the colour of paint flecks from a small bicycle. 

A sense of unease steals into the pages: Jo is harbouring secrets of her own, too difficult and new to share. And she’s wholly aware of that thinking, “Some words, once spoken aloud, go forth into the world and create a life on their own. Some thoughts, or even just wisps of inklings, must never be put into words.” And given that her Toyota is painted in Barcelona Red Metallic, and that several of her loved ones had access to the car that fateful morning, Jo’s protective instinct returns with a vengeance. As the last chapters of this novel unfold, my sense of dread rose once more as I shared Jo’s growing horror as she wonders if someone she loves may have been involved. Her instinct to protect those whom she cares for will drive her to lengths that push this novel forward to a fraught conclusion.

A beautiful Sunshine Coast setting, an exploration of lichen-themed art, and a compassionate portrayal of chronic illness contrasts with the horror of a terrible act of violence and a growing realization that bad things happen to those we love despite trying so hard to control every outcome. Barcelona Red Metallic is both a mystery and thoughtful character study that satisfies on several levels.

Trish Bowering lives in Vancouver, where she is immersed in reading, writing, and vegetable gardening. She has an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Victoria, and obtained her M.D. from UBC. Now retired from her medical practice, she focuses on her love of all things literary. She blogs at TrishTalksBooks.com and reviews on Instagram@trishtalksbooks. [Editor’s note: Trish reviewed books by Andrew Boden, Mix Hart, Steve Burgess, Susan Juby, Myrl Coulter, Christopher Levenson, David Bergen, and Debi Goodwin for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), 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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