55. Sunset and Jericho by Sam Wiebe

I'd heard of this author before and was interested as I am always curious about B.C. detective fiction.  I found this one at a neat little used book store, The Paper Hound, near Gastown when I was out in Vancouver this summer.  Classic little Vancouver downtown eastside anecdote:  when I was walking towards the store, I noticed they had a small bookshelf outside with cheaper books on it as many used bookstores do. I always check those out, but this time there was a woman leaning and peering into them with a particularly folded and intense posture.  I thought, damn she is more into used books than even me!  But no, when I got closer I saw that actually she was a junky nodding off and just happened to use that shelf to lean on.  Ah, Vancouver!  The poor bookstore owner must have a hell of a time.  

A word about The Paper Hound. This is one of those used bookstores where everything is carefully curated and it is more about a wide range of eclectic finds than exhaustive sections of every genre that you usually find.  It's not entirely my jam as they tend to only feature quirky or out there old paperback fiction.  Nevertheless, you can often find gems at these kinds of stores and I always celebrate the people who keep old books alive.  I also found a book of short stories by Barry Gifford.  So continued success to the Paper Hound.  Go visit if you are in Vancouver.

Sunset and Jericho, I learned after I started reading it, is the fourth installment in the Wakeland detective series, about Vancouver private investigator Dave Wakeland.  This was a solid and enjoyable detective story about a gang of anti-capitalist radicals who kidnap and murder the mayor's son.  The plot is deeply integrated into current Vancouver political issues, especially the problematic dynamic of real estate values and the growing gap between the rich and the poor that has destroyed what little homegrown culture Vancouver used to have.  I say "what little" in a slightly demeaning way but I don't belittle it because back in the day there was a really cool punk rock, artists, weirdo scene in Vancouver that was the one thing holding it back from the dominant culture of bourgeois gentility (which had some pleasant aspects though ultimately suffocating and depressing).  Sunset and Jericho gets a little fantastic with some crazy violence and action which I felt extended the ending unnecessarily.  It also portrayed the radicals in a way that you hated them but never really gave the full satisfaction of them getting their asses kicked.  Finally, there was a brutal and what I felt was forced surprise twist at the very ending that kind of undermined the rest of the story for me.  Maybe if I had read the first 3 it would have fit in better, but it just didn't work.

All the criticisms out of the way, the rest of the book up until the ending was a real page-turner with great characters and locations (many of which are familiar to me) and a nice, convoluted backstory to the mystery that was quite satisfying to unfold as you read.  I particularly like the abandoned therapy retreat in the British Properties.  I'm going to keep my eyes open for the first 3 books.