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Dark August: A Novel
by Katie Tallo
“Dark August” is a clever play on words, describing a time, as well as the the main character August “Gus” Monet’s state of mind at the book’s outset.
Gus has been hanging out with a low level criminal for some years, and we soon find out she’s the child of a single mum who was a RCMP detective, before her mother died in a car accident when Gus was a child. Before that, Gus’ mother had become obsessed with some cases, including one of a girl around Gus’ age, to the extent that Gus was very jealous of what little time her mother gave her.
When Gus is notified that her great grandmother Rose has died and left her something, Gus returns to Rose’s crumbling and neglected home, reuniting with her mother’s now old dog Levi, whom Gus refuses to initially care about as she felt Levi was adopted to salve her mother’s guilt over all the time she was spending away from Gus.
When Gus finds her mother’s case files on some old investigations, she begins following up on the one about the missing girl, as the case took place in Elgin, located not that far away. Gus unearths information about the girl’s family, wealthy and prominent in the town, and finds several things tied to the case: resource extraction and the environmental disaster it caused in the town, business and police corruption, deaths, neglected children, and increasing numbers of accidents amongst the people Gus talks to. The whole thing wraps up with a violent confrontation when Gus solves the case.
The story has enough twists and turns to keep me happy, as well as a main character full of anger over her resentment and incomprehension over her mother’s actions long ago. Gus’ progression from who she is at the beginning of the book to who she becomes by undertaking her own investigation was believable. Though the culprits weren’t that hard to deduce, the book held my attention. And Levi was a standout.
Gus has been hanging out with a low level criminal for some years, and we soon find out she’s the child of a single mum who was a RCMP detective, before her mother died in a car accident when Gus was a child. Before that, Gus’ mother had become obsessed with some cases, including one of a girl around Gus’ age, to the extent that Gus was very jealous of what little time her mother gave her.
When Gus is notified that her great grandmother Rose has died and left her something, Gus returns to Rose’s crumbling and neglected home, reuniting with her mother’s now old dog Levi, whom Gus refuses to initially care about as she felt Levi was adopted to salve her mother’s guilt over all the time she was spending away from Gus.
When Gus finds her mother’s case files on some old investigations, she begins following up on the one about the missing girl, as the case took place in Elgin, located not that far away. Gus unearths information about the girl’s family, wealthy and prominent in the town, and finds several things tied to the case: resource extraction and the environmental disaster it caused in the town, business and police corruption, deaths, neglected children, and increasing numbers of accidents amongst the people Gus talks to. The whole thing wraps up with a violent confrontation when Gus solves the case.
The story has enough twists and turns to keep me happy, as well as a main character full of anger over her resentment and incomprehension over her mother’s actions long ago. Gus’ progression from who she is at the beginning of the book to who she becomes by undertaking her own investigation was believable. Though the culprits weren’t that hard to deduce, the book held my attention. And Levi was a standout.