Flying back to Saskatoon from Hawaii, the passenger sitting next to Russell Quant tells him he has a treasure map. On their arrival, the passenger is murdered and when he gets home Russell finds the treasure map has been slipped into his jacket pocket. How can he not try to find the treasure?

The treasure hunt was great fun, actually more fun than the murder mystery itself. ( )

Anthony Bidulka's #6 novel in his Russell Quant mystery series. Not much Hawaii in it, just the first half of chapter one, where Russell get a marriage proposal from his long distance boyfriend, Alex. It's a bit of an awkward situation since Russell has a big, big crush on Ethan from the last book, which we meet again in this one. The plot is set around a treasure hunt around Saskatoon historical landmarks, the mystery is predictable, right down to the lost of Russell most treasure possession. It's more a transition book, where we say goodbye to some characters and welcome new ones into the fowl. Not a bad book, more an ordinary one. ( )

Let me start by confessing that I don't usually read mysteries. A colleague lent me this book because I'm from Saskatoon and thought I'd enjoy recognizing the places mentioned in the story. Which I did.

This is a mystery story complete with a murder and a treasure map. It was well written and plausible. It is also the ongoing story of Russell Quant and his family and friends. And that part of the book worked well too, as Russell worked out his true feelings about the man he'd agreed to marry and the man of his dreams -- unfortunately, not the same man! Parts of the book were very funny, parts had a real emotional pull as relationships tend to have. Very enjoyable read. ( )

Your attention please, aspiring mystery novelists: If your killer isn't introduced to the reader of your mystery by p50 of a 224+pp book, you are not playing fair with your readers.

That is the one and only reason I took a tenth of a star from this fun, breezy, sweet mystery, number six in a seven-book (to date) series. I don't know exactly how this happened, but when I looked over my records (snort--when I went and looked at the reviews page for the book!), I was startled to see that I never wrote a review after gobbling this confection down last year. Well, the new book is out (Date with a Sheesha), so it was no effort to pull it out and read it again.

*contented sigh* The book begins with a beautiful man making a beautiful marriage proposal to Russell Quant (Our Hero), in the most gorgeously romantic setting imaginable, and ends with a chapter of the most wonderfully visual romantic wooing that I've ever run across, and in between Our Hero dashes around gay, metropolitan Saskatoon like Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace, getting ready for his best friend's wedding, introducing his mother to smutty literature (accidentally and hilariously), losing his beloved Molly the Miata to a crazed maniac, getting drunk as a lord with his straight police nemesis, and oh yeah solving a murder that has ties to one of Canada's leading (fictional, of course) literary lights and political dynasties.

In series-mystery-talk, this is one with legs. It's always fun to see these characters, and there are some new faces for us to learn to love...Russell's much older sister shows up, lights a candle in the darkness of the Quant family history, and casts a newly nuanced light on Russell's delightfully clueless mom, Kay.

There is never any sex in these books, which is both an analysis and a complaint...but it makes the series very homophobe-friendly, because the challenge isn't to gloss over the ewww-ickness of gay sex, but to relate as best one can to the pains, pangs, and pleasures of falling in love, being in love, and loving with fury and strength the people in one's world. I think that's universal enough to pull in a few readers...I hope it is...and I recommend that a few brave-but-squeamish straight people try reading the Russell Quant series. Amuse Bouche will start you out right. I don't think most of you will be disappointed, who make the leap. ( )

We find our intrepid PD from Saskatoon, Russell Quant, engaged to be married. On his way home, he finds himself sitting next to a man who leaves him with a treasure map, after he is murdered at the airport. With the casting of ashes, a wedding to attend and a sister who rubs him up the wrong way visiting his mother, Russell finds himself dodging an unknown driver of a white truck who seems intent on harming him, while trying to decipher the clues on the map. As with the others, this is a mad cap adventure with our effervescent PD and oh so thoroughly enjoyable. ( )