CAPE DIAMOND

A second case for Frank Yakabuski, senior detective with Canada’s Springfield Regional Police Force, entangles him in gang warfare, kidnapping, murder, and theft on a grand scale.

Even in death, Augustus Morrissey, King of the Shiners, is just one surprise after another. Most gang leaders, no matter how many enemies they make, don’t get beaten and stabbed to death, have their eyes cut out—a technique long associated with the rival Travellers, led by Gabriel Dumont—and get tied to a fence in full view of a housing project in which nobody bothers to call the police. And of course very few corpses have a diamond worth over $1 million shoved down their throats. There’s every indication that the diamond in question came from the De Kirk Mines even though De Kirk general manager Peter Merkel smugly maintains that his security measures put theft out of the question. When Yakabuski (Ragged Lake, 2017) tracks down long-missing Terry Maguire and offers to get his grandson, teenage meth head Jimmy O’Driscoll, into a top rehab program and shield him from the Popeyes motorcycle gang, who want him to pay what he owes them or else, Maguire indicates that he does indeed know who killed Augustus Morrissey but that he won’t tell. Instead, he assures Yakabuski that he’ll find all the answers he needs if he can only locate Katherine Morrissey, the mother of Sean Morrissey, the King’s son and heir apparent. Katherine Morrissey proves even more elusive than Maguire, who was declared dead 14 years ago. And that’s tough on everyone, because an all-out gang war between the Shiners and the Travellers erupts while Yakabuski is still looking for her.

Frigid North Shore landscapes, kitchen-sink plotting, and a dogged investigator who doesn’t know when or how to quit. Even though this is only his second outing, somebody definitely owes Corbett’s hero a vacation.