Book Review: Masks for Murder

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Masks for Murder     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
C. C. Canby
Class/Genre:   Mystery
J. Press, Oct 2003, $24.95, 358 pp.

Zeke Mallard is a detective on the White Bear Lake Police Department (a Twin Cities’ suburb). Inside his garage, Zeke is bending, trying to get his groceries from his car when suddenly someone stabs him in the back and when he’s incapacitated in the chest and leg.

Andrew White planned to shoot Zeke for messing around with his ex- girlfriend and sees the small-stature man go in and leave with a bloody knife and bloody cloth. He walks into the garage and finds Zeke dead. He hightails it out of there because he knows that the police will want to pin the crime on him. At the funeral, Andrew’s ex-girlfriend comes to the attention of Zeke’s partner Detective Lanslow. The cop learns that Andrew threatened Zeke for taking Rosario away from him. Andrew sees the man who killed Zeke and informs Lanslow as the killer strikes again. Lanslow finds the body of a wino and realizes the same person that killed Zeke committed this homicide. He looks elsewhere for a suspect and stumbles across information that will turn the case into a media circus because the circumstances that made him kill are bizarre.

Lanslow is shocked that his good friend and partner cheated on his wife and had a secret life that he knew nothing about. All the characters, including the protagonist, the victim, Andrew and the killer are neither good nor evil which makes them more interesting, especially when they interact with the secondary characters. C.C. Canby has written an exciting police procedural in the tradition of Christine McGuire and Paul Bishop.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner