Its a morning like any other, when seventy-four-year-old Mr Gurdial Singh, former chief engineer of the India National railroad (the largest transportation company in the world), goes on his newspaper round. He is looking forward to his daily exchange with Kevin Brace, popular radio talk show host on the twelfth floor of the luxury Holmes Tower in central Toronto. But this time his customer is not waiting to greet him and when the door is eventually opened to Mr Singhs tentative knock, Mr Kevin is standing there, covered in blood. I killed her, Mr Singh, he said. I killed her. In fact these are the last words Kevin Brace will speak. In what appears to be a watertight case of the murder of his young wife, he makes no attempt to excuse or justify her killing or explain the circumstances. What follows is a complex and richly detailed investigation of the crime and a compelling examination of the process of the law.
Along the way we will meet witnesses, the police detectives, the prosecutors, the defense team, the family of the victim and of the accused and we will be propelled into the very heart of their lives: Lawrence Kelley rookie detective, but qualified lawyer, who has joined the police force partly in an attempt to solve the murder of his own brother, Ari Greene, the sophisticated tea-drinking lead investigator, son of a Holocaust survivor, who will discover in the course of the story that he is not his fathers only son, Sarah McGill, Braces first wife, who mysteriously still runs his life while making bread for her caf, Albert Fernandez, Chilean immigrant and ambitious Crown lawyer, handed his first murder to prosecute, chaotic, brilliant Nancy Parish, a defense lawyer whose client refuses to speak to her, Officer Ho, the Chinese forensic expert who may, just, have overlooked a key piece of evidence ...What begins as a seemingly open-and-shut case soon develops into a fascinating, intricately plotted web of lies and hidden motives, punctuated by genuine heroism.
I received a copy of this novel thanks to the GoodReads First Reads program. Old City Hall is an intriguing murder mystery with a few unexpected twists and turns that unfolds at a realistic pace. I enjoyed getting to know more about these characters, who they are and how they react in certain situations and how they handle the mystery before them. Perhaps my favourite part of the novel is how the author brings the city of Toronto to life--from the districts and structures to the multiculturalism to the hockey culture. I highly recommend this novel to fans of crime and mystery novels!
My complete review of the novel was originally posted at caffeinatedlife.net: http://www.caffeinatedlife.net/blog/2013/03/24/review-old-city-hall/
