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Movie-industry dirt and the inner workings of all-girl street gangs provide a compelling backdrop for
The Ferryman Will Be There, the third title in Rosemary Aubert's utterly original mystery series featuring homeless ex-judge Ellis Portal. When a prominent director gets shot dead on the eve of his Toronto Film Festival gala screening, Portal--who is getting his life off the skids but still rates respect on the street--is called in to help track the filmmaker's missing 15-year-old daughter, who is also the movie's fast-rising star. Portal soon learns that the girl may have excellent reasons for hiding, and to find her, his most bankable asset is trust. As he explains, "Alliances formed on the street are like alliances formed among obscure nations. They may not make sense to the powerful; in fact, they may seem foolish and evil. But, hinged on survival, they have an innocence all their own."
In The Ferryman Will Be There, Portal has moved into a rooming house from the ravine he inhabited in criminologist and former romance author Aubert's first two mysteries--including the 1999 Arthur Ellis Award winner The Feast of Stephen--but the lively character of Toronto's streets and diverse neighbourhoods remains central to the plot. The text is filled with T.O. in-jokes, beginning with Ellis Portal's name, which the protagonist shares with a subway train tunnel. --Deirdre Hanna
From Publishers Weekly
Canadian Aubert's third Ellis Portal mystery (Free Reign; The Feast of Stephen) is a well-written, if pedestrian, descent into the world of homeless young women. A professional criminologist, the author brings compassionate insight into the pathetic, often terrible, people who inhabit this underworld. These insights, alas, are the high points of the story. Middle-aged detective Ellis Portal, a former judge who fell from grace through drink and drugs, wound up homeless on the streets and re-ascended to the edge of respectability, helps his friend, Det. Sgt. Matt West, to locate a young woman, Carrie Simm. Her father, a Toronto movie producer, was murdered in front of her, in full view of hundreds of people, at a film premiere. Possibly fearing for her own life, Carrie disappeared. She has a history of running away, and West suspects she's hiding with her homeless women companions. He asks Portal to use his contacts to locate her. No surprise Portal soon finds himself looking for a lot more than a missing girl. Too much, perhaps. Aubert introduces so many characters and concerns that Carrie almost becomes a McGuffin. Bland, whiny and self-absorbed, Portal endlessly relives his rise and fall, while his success as a detective is entirely due to incredible luck. Both he and West make some stupid errors in judgment. The worst judgment of all is the author's: her killer never could have gotten away with the method Aubert chooses. A consistently readable, often interesting, but ultimately disappointing book. (June 1)best mystery novel of 1999.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
