Vile Spirits

An exhilarating page-turner set in 1920s Vancouver post prohibition, when liquor was the fuel driving big business, big government-and major crime. In this spellbinding follow-up to his mystery The White Angel, John MacLachlan Gray captures the spirit of Vancouver in those gritty, gin-soaked days, as the city was remaking itself between wars.Alcohol is once again legal in Vancouver after the failed experiment of prohibition, but pro-temperance sentiments remain strong. Politicians like Attorney-General Gordon Cunning attempt appeasement by establishing the Liquor Control Board, which oversees supply, from the lofty circles of power down to bleak public drinking factories called "e;beer parlours."e;But when Cunning is found deceased, an empty martini glass at his side, quickly followed by Mrs. Harlan Crombie, the wife of a prominent bureaucrat, who falls dead after an afternoon book club meeting, suspicions are raised. Is it pure coincidence that the deceased were both drinking the same brand of "e;tonic"e;? Or is it a spillover from American prohibition, where deliberately tainted booze is killing thousands?Fans of The White Angel will be delighted by the return of straight-shooting constable Calvin Hook, frustrated poet-cum-reporter Ed McCurdy and unpredictable, eavesdropping telephone operator Mildred Wickstram, as they pool their skills in order to get to the truth.The result is a clash between temperance activists, the Klu Klux Klan, the Liquor Control Board and global events on the mean streets of Vancouver-a rough little city on the edge of empire.