Aloha, Candy Hearts: A Russell Quant Mystery

by Anthony Bidulka

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

PR9199.4.B497A56 2009

Publication

Toronto, Ont : Insomniac Press, 2009.

Description

Russell Quant, private detective is perplexed. From the middle of the Pacific to the middle of Canada, he's missing clues and proposing answers that only beg questions. The parking lot murder of an almost client draws Quant to a poem that just might be a treasure map.

User reviews

LibraryThing member richardderus

Your attention please, aspiring mystery novelists: If your killer isn't introduced to the reader of your mystery by p50 of a 224+pp book, you are not playing fair with your readers.

That is the one and only reason I took a tenth of a star from this fun, breezy, sweet mystery, number six in a

seven-book (to date) series. I don't know exactly how this happened, but when I looked over my records (snort--when I went and looked at the reviews page for the book!), I was startled to see that I never wrote a review after gobbling this confection down last year. Well, the new book is out (Date with a Sheesha), so it was no effort to pull it out and read it again.

*contented sigh* The book begins with a beautiful man making a beautiful marriage proposal to Russell Quant (Our Hero), in the most gorgeously romantic setting imaginable, and ends with a chapter of the most wonderfully visual romantic wooing that I've ever run across, and in between Our Hero dashes around gay, metropolitan Saskatoon like Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace, getting ready for his best friend's wedding, introducing his mother to smutty literature (accidentally and hilariously), losing his beloved Molly the Miata to a crazed maniac, getting drunk as a lord with his straight police nemesis, and oh yeah solving a murder that has ties to one of Canada's leading (fictional, of course) literary lights and political dynasties.

In series-mystery-talk, this is one with legs. It's always fun to see these characters, and there are some new faces for us to learn to love...Russell's much older sister shows up, lights a candle in the darkness of the Quant family history, and casts a newly nuanced light on Russell's delightfully clueless mom, Kay.

There is never any sex in these books, which is both an analysis and a complaint...but it makes the series very homophobe-friendly, because the challenge isn't to gloss over the ewww-ickness of gay sex, but to relate as best one can to the pains, pangs, and pleasures of falling in love, being in love, and loving with fury and strength the people in one's world. I think that's universal enough to pull in a few readers...I hope it is...and I recommend that a few brave-but-squeamish straight people try reading the Russell Quant series. Amuse Bouche will start you out right. I don't think most of you will be disappointed, who make the leap.

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LibraryThing member BrianEWilliams

It's an amusing and entertaining murder mystery, like the others in the series. Essentially all of the story takes place in Saskatoon, unlike some of the others which are set in more exotic locales, e.g. Africa. It's also as much about the private detective (and his family & friends) as it is about

the murder, which is a good thing. The identity of the killer could be easily figured out near the point that it was revealed (which is OK), and the remainder of the book carried it off well. At the end of the book, the stage is set for the next book in the series, at least for the continuing story of Russell Quant's life and times.

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LibraryThing member cameling

We find our intrepid PD from Saskatoon, Russell Quant, engaged to be married. On his way home, he finds himself sitting next to a man who leaves him with a treasure map, after he is murdered at the airport. With the casting of ashes, a wedding to attend and a sister who rubs him up the wrong way

visiting his mother, Russell finds himself dodging an unknown driver of a white truck who seems intent on harming him, while trying to decipher the clues on the map. As with the others, this is a mad cap adventure with our effervescent PD and oh so thoroughly enjoyable.

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LibraryThing member LynnB

Let me start by confessing that I don't usually read mysteries. A colleague lent me this book because I'm from Saskatoon and thought I'd enjoy recognizing the places mentioned in the story. Which I did.

This is a mystery story complete with a murder and a treasure map. It was well written and

plausible. It is also the ongoing story of Russell Quant and his family and friends. And that part of the book worked well too, as Russell worked out his true feelings about the man he'd agreed to marry and the man of his dreams -- unfortunately, not the same man! Parts of the book were very funny, parts had a real emotional pull as relationships tend to have. Very enjoyable read.

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