Recommended with qualifications as below.
It has an exotic setting, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The Canadian Prairies in January and February no less. Dry frozen.
The protagonist is a part-lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan who seems to find plenty of trouble and whose work at the University does not seem to figure largely in her day. Might be the University of Sydney that. She is a widow with two adolescent children. But we do not get bogged down in domesticity.
The good: the provincial art world is a good context, there is none of the padded descriptions I find in many alleged krimies, the characters are differentiated though not always credible (like Nina the villain). For the most part the weather is presented realistically. Sally, the artist, is well drawn, way too smart and a very charming and talented user, but first last and always a user of other people. She reminded of some people I have known.
At one point a character says: ‘In art men look for statements and women look for relations.’ Nice.
The bad: it takes 60 pages of background to get going and the reader has no clue about why to read this and what to take from it. Yes some relevant things from this opening stretch are there at the end but not 60 pages worth. While the weather is there, it does not stop people from hanging clothes on the line and our protagonist gets by for a month without a car which is impossible in such a city because there is no public transport to speak of and few taxis. I also found the dirty secret not to be so dirty though perhaps in Saskatchewan it would be hard to live down. Stuart is also less than believable and after centring on him he then disappears toward the end. A blue herring. The fresco of penises was adolescent.
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