I must have missed reading the book before this one in this series. In the last one I read Joanne was still involved with Alex Kequahtooway, an inspector with the RCMP. But in this one Alex is dead and Joanne is involved with Zack Shreve, a ruthless criminal lawyer who is defending a man accused of attempted murder. I think I'll have to go back and read The Last Good Day to find out what happened.

The relationship with Shreve is going well and Joanne is on her sabbatical year so everything should be rosy. Then Joanne is asked to cover the trial in which Shreve is acting for the defendant and suddenly she gets a different picture of the man she loves. Nevertheless she continues on with her life, entwining it more and more with Zack's, while keeping tabs on her children. Only the youngest, Taylor, is actually living with her and she's a good kid. There is this new boy, Ethan, an artist like Taylor, who has been hanging around quite a bit. Joanne trusts Taylor so she is not worried but she does wonder why Ethan seems to be hanging around the courthouse.

What starts as a courtroom story ends with a vicious murder and Joanne and her daughter are involved with everything. By the end Joanne is moving into a new home and a new marriage but she'll probably end up with more murders to solve.

This was a quick read but I did guess who did it before it was revealed. ( )

(First Published at Blogcritics http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/10/06/140009.php)

From the shores of Wascana Creek, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canadian writer Gail Bowen has released the 10th Joanne Kilbourn mystery. I am fond of Ms. Bowen's work. She has a great sense of place; Regina and Saskatoon, windy prairie cities with the pastoral charm and small town spirit of Lake Wobegon and Fargo, plus cold winters, seem like nice places.

Bowen writes mysteries around a mature woman - a grandmother - with a life and career that does not revolve on anger and violence. She gets mood and emotional colour, and her characters live ordinary lives, taking care of each other. She is a great advocate of the virtues of taking care of the people you care about, tolerating their foibles and enjoying the rhythms of daily life - the conversations, meals and routines that make up our lives.

The Endless Knot has her usual strengths, but also brings some of her weaknesses into focus. The plot is contrived and serves as a platform for politically correct judgmental commentary. An ex-folksinging duo who have since become wealthy, and have met Jesus in a big evangelical church in Calgary, have a transgendered child, who has been interviewed by a cold-blooded bitch of a journalist who empathizes with child in order to get sensational celebrity dirt on the family for a book. Dad is on trial for shooting and wounding the bitch.

In this scenario Kilbourn has lots of people to pity and judge - lawyers, fundamentalists, journalists, politicians. The Fundamentalist mom gets particular hell for not supporting her son's gender switch. The Culture Wars are being fought in the Canadian West, and Bowen is clear about where she stands. Bowen does, however, better with lawyers and trials than in her last book, The Last Good Day.

Bowen manages to put her finger on another strength and weakness in a bit of dialogue. Joanne Kilbourn tells her lover that an old friend accused her of being a moralist, and her lover replies that she is moral. Kilbourn is an intelligent middle-aged, middle-class woman, sincere but meddling, self-satisfied and condescending. Her inner voice is constantly employed in assessing people against her own wisdom.

Joanne herself is contented with her sex life - she has frequent sex with her paraplegic lover, but she is catty about a younger female journalist who "does" too many random guys for the wrong reasons. Kilbourn is a a very real middle-aged woman, interfering in, and judging, her children's and friend's lives, rationalizing her interference as altruism. I can't tell if Bowen has the guts to write her character as multi-dimensional, or if she uses Joanne as a platform to spout pseudo-feminist banality.

I have criticisms of Bowen's technique, and arguments with some of her values, but I come back to her amazing, loving sense of place and belief in the importance of family and friends, which wins out. In books about untimely death, that is grace. ( )

A tense and gripping story, part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, part love story, part parenting nightmare... Gail Bowen weaves many threads into this 10th Joanne Kilbourn mystery. Author Kathryn Morrissey has interviewed the children of some well-known Canadian politicians, young adults with a variety of personal problems and broken relationships with their parents. Her book leaves those people feeling betrayed and furiously angry. When Morrissey is found murdered, an old political friend of Joanne Kilbourn's is charged, and he hires Joanne's lover Zack Shreve as his defence lawyer. Joanne attends the trial in Regina, Saskatchewan, an exciting courtroom drama, and a further violent death results after the verdict is read. Joanne must discover the truth, to protect her friends and her own family. She gets to know a number of unhappy people, and discovers problems between parents and children, and between husbands and wives. Joanne's own relationships are shifting, with her daughter Mieka, with her adopted daughter Taylor, and with Zack Shreve, the lawyer who is starting to talk about marriage, although they've only been dating for three months.
This mystery series concentrates more on emotional and moral dilemmas rather than traditional clues and detective work. I find the characters compelling and believable, and the setting very realistic, so that I am drawn into the increasingly tense situations and am anxious to read to the end, to make sure that everyone will be okay. This is a good mystery and an interesting novel, and I would recommend the whole series. ( )

i dont usually read canadian authors (hanges head, even though i am canadian!) this was was a very good read and i will be looking for more of her kilborn mysterys ( )