Honour Among Men: An Inspector Green Mystery

Honor Among Men is the sixth in a 10-book Inspector Green series by Barbara Fradkin, an award-winning Canadian crime novelist. This is somewhat of a complex plot which is very well told. Two boys from rule Nova Scotia are sent to Serbia-Croatia in 1993 as a part of the UN’s peacekeeping mission. They both see too much tragedy there and are very frustrated by the constantly changing restrictions that are put on their efforts by the UN bosses. After a year’s tour, they bring their traumas home causing their families great suffering. But these matters only gain prominence when a murdered woman’s body is found in the river in Ottawa, very near Parliament Hill. Inspector Green is called in when the woman’s possessions contain a medal for bravery. Therein begins the military connection, the investigation of which is made difficult by the opaque responses by the military. Meanwhile, more murders take place and one cop is nearly beaten to death during the investigation. Fradkin takes these very interesting and well-developed characters back and forth in time between the events in 1993 and the current-time investigation, and the characters travel between Ottawa and Halifax. This is a good book which won the Arthur Ellis Award as the best crime novel in 2007, and it gets my strong recommendation.

It was pretty cool how I learned about this author and this novel. I’m a great fan of the writing of Louise Penny, and I recently read her novella, The Hangman. She included a character named Arthur Ellis, an assumed name of the character who once was Canada’s official executioner. One of her beloved characters, Myrna, a bookstore owner, recognized the name and showed Inspector Armand Gamache a book by Barbara Fradkin which had won the Arthur Ellis award. In Penny’s story, Ellis had come to town to kill someone, but someone killed him first. At the time I was reading Penny’s novella, I had no knowledge of the award or of Fradkin, but quick Google searches showed these were not fictitious characters. So, I decided to read one Fradkin’s books that won the award. Kudos to Penny for this clever way of bringing Fradkin to my attention. I plan to read more of Fradkin.