Nightshade is the first novel in a projected series by Tom Henighan, featuring Ottawa-based private detective Sam Montcalm, whose most frequent jobs involve the sordid little affairs of the rich and famous. On vacation in Quebec City, he is asked by an old girlfriend, Clara, to help their mutual friend, police officer Paul Berthelet, discover the facts behind the mysterious murder of a genetic scientist, poisoned with deadly nightshade. The police already suspect Clara's partner Daniel, an Indian activist and artist, but Sam soon learns that there are far more suspects than that.... As someone living in Montreal, I've of course visited both Ottawa and Quebec City many times, which is why I was curious about this book. Unfortunately, I was not impressed with either the main character or the settings in which he finds himself; there's an attempt to give Sam a sad and difficult back-story which rings fairly hollow, and incidents placed in Quebec are marred by the author's decision to use English abbreviations for French institutions: calling the SQ (surete du Quebec) by the abbreviation QPP, apparently patterned after Ontario's Provincial Police, just threw me completely out of the story. Those readers who don't live in this Province won't have that problem, obviously, but they may not find much else to admire in the book either. I spotted the murderer very early on, too, which is disappointing in a mystery. I won't be searching for the second book in this series, and wouldn't recommend that anybody else bother, either. ( )

The story had lots of potential - a scientist poisoned at a conference and an aboriginal artist is the chief suspect -- but the author turned it into a parody of the hard-boiled detective mystery story. Some of the dialogue was stilted and wooden. The protagonist was not credible to me and he tended to pontificate. The rest of the characters tended to be cartoonish stereotypes -- the ugly American FBI agent and the young gay drug addict. I read somewhere that the author is working on a sequel to this book. Let's hope it's better than this one. ( )