LOCKED UP: TALES OF MYSTERY AND MISCHANCE ALONG CANADA'S RIDEAU CANAL WATERWAY edited by Sue Pike

** Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: Deadlock Press 2007 $15.95 CDN

A lot of water has flowed under the bridges of Canada's 175-year-old Rideau Canal, a UN heritage site known as “North America's longest continuously operating waterway.” And a lot of history, mysteries and misadventures have occurred as well in and along the Canal's 125-mile route from Kingston to the nation's capital, Ottawa. In her cleverly compiled short story collection Locked Up editor Sue Pike not only commemorates the famous waterway but also showcases the talents of eighteen of Canada's best mystery writers.

Beginning with a story about Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald caught up with a mysterious stranger and a murder in Kingston, each tale takes place at a lockstation or town along the canal. Some occur in historic settings, others are in current times. Some like Orland French's Going Through the Sluices with a protagonist trapped in a sluice, Pat Wilson's Friday Night at Narrows Lock with a crippled spouse and a dead lover, and Susan Lightstone's The Truth as I Know It with three children, one in a wheelchair, on a canal walkway from which only two return are horrifically fascinating. Others concern ghosts, one of an ethereal Palomino, another of a skiff sometimes seen, sometimes not. More light-hearted stories are told as well about an old school PI tracking the owner of a dredged up bicycle, a wannabe Canal Crooner chasing a “dash-and-diner” who short-changed a waitress, and a lovable con woman who outcons her competition to get the deed to more than just a fishing resort. There's even a suspenseful but hilarious fishy tale of A Basstardly Deed with a surprising twist but one in which the big one doesn't get away.

A masterfully edited anthology with every entry worth reading, the final story, Peter Calamai's The Riddle of the Rideau Rifles deserves a special mention for its combination of history, mystery, chills, thrills and smiles. The story involves a British agent code named “Sigerson” who arrives in late 1800's Ottawa to solve “a three pipe problem” by using his “deductive trail,” wearing a variety of disguises and cautioning the narrator, “You see, Evans, but you do not observe.” Surely, it must be Sherlock, surely it's a fascinating read, and just as surely it's an excellent one with which to end an excellent collection of Rideau Canal commemorative stories.

Reviewed by M. Wayne Cunningham