Parole Board

** Barrie, Ontario, Canada: Battlefield Publishing Inc. 2006 US $16.95

Every year thousands of tributes pour into Graceland for Elvis. Now there's another one from Toronto film and television writer/producer, Glen Bonham. His homage to the King is a kick-ass debut novel, The Elvis Interviews, which was a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada 2007 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel in 2006. It opens on a high note that it holds right through to the very surprising ending that proves once again that "Elvis Lives" whether in the flesh or in the stuff of legends.

** 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.

I review specialist non-fiction as well as genre fiction. Largely the same rules apply - what's the writing like, does the book hang together well and does the author know their stuff? But I'd then expect to make some adjustments. If I'm reviewing fiction, I'll want to talk about characterisation. And I may well refer to different expectations in the sub-genre (like you mention with thrillers, or with romantic suspense where the hero and heroine have to meet, fall in love, argue, fall out of love, fall back in love, get married . .

"Different approaches to different sub-genres seem, to me at least, to be difficult to avoid. I'm going to open a thriller with different expectations to those a drawing room cozy would presuppose, hence I can't help but have different reviewing criteria.

"I don't necessarily think one should apply different criteria when reviewing books. Rather when one sits down to review a book of any genre, he/she should first try to understand what the author wished to do. A book should be judged on its own merits and its own intentions. In some instance of a thriller novel, a realistic protagonist might "work" if it was the intention of the author to portray him as such or the intention was to investigate certain themes that could only impact if the novel was brutally realistic. Having a superman wouldn't do the novel any good..

Topic: Reviewing Genres & Subgenres

Question: Should there be different reviewing criteria for the different subgenres? Within crime fiction, for example, some people do not feel any book classified a thriller needs to be realistic. Thriller protagonists are allowed to display superhero-like qualities - an ability to go for days without sleeping or eating, etc, and still defeat their adversaries.