With a cast of archetype characters that knows everyone else’s business on Red Island, it seems almost ironic when 90-year-old Abel Mack goes missing.
Abel’s best friends and family, including his wife, Gus, are not even sure if they would recognize him if found.
Abel, among others, has been on the hunt for a giant codfish that seems to leave misfortune in its wake. The local Mountie believes he may be dead, but his wife is convinced he is still alive and will return home.
A missing poster, based on an old photograph of Abel, is painted across the rural landscape. But is murder, mayhem or, misadventure at play in this sleepy fishing village?
'Cod Only Knows.'
The search for Abel continues with two key descriptive ingredients – he’s wearing a Tilly hat and possibly carrying his favourite rubber duck mug, used for coffee.
As the story weaves through the characters and their quirks, the lives of the residents seem to intertwine and, all is not what it seems.
In this sixth recently launched Shores Mystery by P.E.I. author Hilary MacLeod, all these village folk appear to have their own agenda and are in search of the “one that got away.”
This quintessential Maritime story published by the Acorn Press, for all the ages, feels like a clash of the Simon Pegg 2007 comedy “Hot Fuzz,” where a small town harbours a dark secret, and “The Old Man and the Sea,” by Ernest Hemingway.
MacLeod is a writer and former CBC broadcaster. She was awarded the CBC Bookie Award for the Best Mystery in 2011 for “Revenge of the Lobster Lover.” MacLeod’s books are staged in a small fishing village in P.E.I., inspired by Sea View, which has been the author’s home for the past 27 years.
“The Shores series is as much about people and place as about plot. The same characters inhabit the stories book after book,” concluded MacLeod.
