4 out of 5 stars
***2025 Summer: Murder Across Canada***
British Columbia
This book is an intriguing mixture of the serious and the hilarious. Susan Juby obviously has a well developed sense of humour, which she deploys just enough. Her characters are wonderful, very reminiscent of Thomas King's in The Back of the Turtle or Sufferance. To my way of thinking, that is a huge compliment.
Our Buddhist butler main character, Helen Thorpe, is trying not to be unhappy about her current task. Her friend and former employer, Edna, had asked her to oversee a kind of test for Edna's younger relatives to see which one would be best suited to take on the management of her rather eccentric lodge after Edna's death. Helen is comforted by two of her butler classmates who insist on helping her.
The characters who really stand out are the young man that Helen hires locally as an assistant (Nigel) and Edna's great nieces and nephews, who are all seemingly entitled assholes, each in their own obnoxious way. They are deliciously horrible, but we get to know them better along with Helen, as she guides them through the classes they must take: flower arranging, dance, and meditation.
Helen has questions about Edna's death. The police have ruled it suicide, which is completely unlike the Edna that Helen knew. But Helen would prefer to leave the investigation to the professionals, at least until she has accumulated enough doubts to truly concern her.
It's wonderful to watch the three close butler friends work supportively together, as Nigel says, “Butlering the shit out of everything.” I also enjoyed Nigel's evolution from a useless young man to a guy with aspirations. Of course I appreciated watching Helen's reluctant but thorough investigation. Juby chose a perfect perpetrator in my opinion. I will definitely read more of Helen Thorpe's adventure.