TITLE: The Walker on the Cape
AUTHOR: Mike Martin
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
AVAILABILITY: Mike Martin's Official Website (e-book and paperback, listings on a variety of online and brick-and-mortar retailers)
APPROXIMATE LENGTH: 240 pages
Recommended for fans of murder mysteries and stories featuring local color.
GENRE
Mystery—Cozy Mystery/Whodunit
The Walker on the Cape follows the form of a
classic whodunit. It opens with a dead body and follows Sergeant
Winston Windflower as he investigates the murder. The story is set in a
small fishing community on the East Coast and contains
a lot of local color.
PACE
The Walker on the Cape is a moderately-paced
murder mystery. The questions of “what happened” and “who’s the killer”
keep the plot moving forward while Windflower’s interactions with the
locals allow the reader to enjoy the setting.
PERSPECTIVE
The majority of this book is written from the third
person perspective of Windflower and rotates to other characters’
points of view. At times, it takes on a more omniscient narrative
distance.
CONTENT REVIEW
The Walker on the Cape opens as every good
murder mystery should: with a dead body. The body is that of Elias
Martin, an elderly man known for taking long strolls along the cape.
Investigating the death is Sergeant Winston Windflower,
who recently moved into town. When Windflower discovers that Elias was
poisoned, he begins an investigation into the old man’s past to find the
killer. Elias led a seemingly quiet life, but as Windflower learns
more, he soon realizes that perhaps the old man’s
life wasn’t so peaceful after all.
Windflower is an amiable and easily likable
detective figure. He’s a classic good guy—determined, kind-hearted, and
tough when he needs to be. Having been born and raised on a remote
Indian reservation, he finds living in the small fishing
community of Grand Bank to be quite a change from what he’s used to.
His interactions with the locals, including a winsome café owner, bring
the setting to life. In fact, it is this local color that makes
The Walker on the Cape memorable.
Martin writes with a charming lilt reminiscent of
classic cozy mysteries. The characters are a quirky bunch, such as the
over-enthusiastic young policeman, Constable Eddie Tizzard, and the
blustering Inspector MacIntosh. Between the investigation
scenes, Windflower discovers his affections for the aforementioned café
owner, a delightful woman name Sheila who introduces Windflower to the
local comforts.
For a taste of Martin’s writing style, here’s the
opening paragraph of the first chapter: “Even in an ordinary life the
most extraordinary things can happen. Every morning for the past eleven
years Elias Martin has had his breakfast of
hot porridge and thick molasses bread smothered in partridgeberry jam.
Then, rain or shine, he began his solitary walk from his small blue
house on Elizabeth Avenue in Grand Bank, Newfoundland, down through the
Cove, and until the winter snow made it impassable,
up over the hills to the Cape.”
Such descriptions and charm are carried out
throughout the novel, which retains a cheery atmosphere despite the
bleakness of Windflower’s job. Like all cozy mysteries, the detective
figure in
The Walker on the Cape is removed from the danger and spends the
majority of the investigation interviewing suspects and witnesses or
stewing in his own thoughts. Things take an interesting turn about
halfway through the book when corruption is unveiled
and an arrest is made.
In terms of the plot, Martin has constructed a well
laid-out web of suspects and motives, and he certainly seems to know
his way around a police procedural. From the forensic reports to the ins
and outs of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
he depicts a believable world of crime scenes and investigators.
All in all, I found The Walker in the Cape
to be a fun and lighthearted read. It’s the kind of mystery that lets
one delve into the various possible scenarios, revealing various
backgrounds and stories along the way. The reader gets
to explore the little town of Grand Bank along with Windflower,
experiencing all its delights and hospitality.
THE NITPICKY STUFF
I found a number of small errors such as typos.
Also, and this is really nitpicky, Martin tends to write in long
sentences, often unbroken by commas.
This book is fairly G-rated in terms of sex, violence, language, etc.
AUTHOR INFO
Mike Martin was born in Newfoundland and now lives
in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a longtime freelance writer and a member of
Ottawa Independent Writers, Capital Crime Writers, the Crime Writers of
Canada, and the Newfoundland Writers’ Guild.
The Walker on the Cape is his first full fiction book.
RELATED: An Interview with Mike Martin
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