Book ~ "Little Boy Blues" (2002) Mary Jane Maffini

From Amazon ~ In the third Camilla MacPhee Mystery, Camilla's looking forward to cutting loose at Bluesfest, a huge open-air musical extravaganza, and to seeing the tail end of her annoying office assistant, Alvin, who is finally quitting. Then the news comes from the East Coast. Alvin's developmentally challenged younger brother, Jimmy, has vanished from the midst of a holiday crowd in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Is he dead? Has he been abducted?

Sleuthing irritably about Sydney on Alvin's behalf, the always ruthless Camilla manages to make the usual quota of people froth at the mouth, including Jimmy's frantic family, forlorn friends and puzzled teachers. She doesn't spare the parish priest or even the guy at the chip stand. And naturally the Cape Breton Regional Police won't be sending her any valentines. Before Camilla knows it, all roads lead back to the big city, where a killer with everything to lose waits to create havoc among the tents, guitar-pickers and happy, swaying crowds. If Camilla doesn't sort out this whole mess, how many other people are going to die?

I love mystery novels and it's fun when they are based in Canada and/or written by Canadian authors.

Though this is apparently the third in a series, I didn't have any problem catching up. I enjoyed the writing style and didn't find that it dragged. I read it in a day (today). And I liked it enough to read the books before and after it in the series. I recommend it!

What made this book all that much better was that it was partially based in Sydney, Nova Scotia, where I lived from 1977 to 1983. Plus Camilla lives in Ottawa, which I'm fairly familiar with.

One thing I didn't understand ... Camilla was happy that Alvin, her assistant, has left for another job. Yet when he discovers that his brother is missing, she drives him 1500km from Ottawa to Sydney so he can be with his family. His family is rude to her yet she still sticks around to help. I would have jumped back in the car and said "Frig you!"

Annoyingly there were a fair amount of typos in the book ... hopefully they have been corrected in future reprints.