I started this one in the hopes of finishing it to pass on to another reader. I looked forward to more delightful enlightenment from the world’s calmest butler since Jeeves and was not disappointed.
In this second of the Helen Thorpe mystery series, we find Helen ensconced in West Vancouver with a wealthy and eclectic couple who decide to “loan” her to a friend in need. The friend’s daughter, actually – a 20yo influencer named Cartier, who has become entangled with some unsavoury online types. Helen appears out of her depth at first, as the ways of the internet and social media are not at all familiar to her, but she enlists the help of others in her vast and calm circle to bring some order to the chaos. Of course there are murders that she finds herself solving, along with other mysteries and lives that she helps to sort and solve. By the end, Helen has brought her calm to everyone, and after several weeks in the maelstrom of the online world, she is returned to her own place of peace as a butler once again.
Initially, I wasn’t drawn to the story, as the collective of online personalities were vapid and unpleasant. They were also familiar – those loud and perpetually online people who are entranced by their phones and all the swiping and liking that goes on in the virtual world. As Helen seems to do with everyone, she makes even the shallowest influencer a complex human worthy of care and compassion, and so each one eventually becomes a character that, perhaps you don’t love but can at least feel for. I also enjoyed the familiar Vancouver and BC locations (although there is nowhere that Broadway and 7th meet).
Both books in the series are classified as both mysteries and humour novels. Interesting – as with The Librarianist, I wouldn’t have used the humour description for either. They both have their funny moments and quirky characters. Like DeWitt, Juby has won the Leacock prize, so I guess it’s just me that doesn’t get it.
I look forward to the next in this series, and I’ll look for some other Juby novels as well.
Fate: passing along to a fellow Thorpe admirer
1 – a murder
8 – female author
33 – Canadian
36 – part of a series
rclr 
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