One of the nice things about reviewing The Calling, the first novel from pseudonymous “well-known and well-regarded North American writer” Inger Ash Wolfe, is that one can avoid entirely the question of who Wolfe is and instead focus on what should be the key question of any book review: how is it?
The verdict on The Calling? Decidedly mixed.
The novel starts well, with a gruesome scene of what could be called either assisted suicide or outright slaughter. The killer, a wraith of a man named Simon, is on a mysterious cross-country crusade, being welcomed into the homes of terminally ill patients and leaving increasingly cruel and imaginative crime scenes in his wake. The central questions of the novel quickly come into focus: who, exactly, is Simon? What is the motivation for his spree? And can he be stopped?
The officer in charge of answering these questions is an unusual foil for a nation-wide serial killer. Hazel Micallef, the acting chief of the Port Dundas police, is a woman in her sixties with a bad back and a history of alcoholism, a poor relationship with her superiors, and a feisty live-in mother, the small town’s former mayor. Hazel and her fellow officers are drawn into the case when Simon strikes (in the book’s opening murder) Delia Chandler, one of the town elders.
Unfortunately, despite the presence of an interestingly flawed detective and a genuinely creepy murderer, The Calling doesn’t really succeed as a novel. The main problem is one of structure: too often, shortcuts taken for authorial convenience dispel the tension. When Hazel, for example, spends a paragraph describing Delia Chandler’s role in the community, it is necessary information for the reader; but the fact that she’s explaining it to a colleague who already knows it all is jarring, to say the least. Similarly, while the intercutting of parallel killer and pursuer storylines can work to tremendous effect, when Wolfe allows the killer’s storyline to gain several days on the investigators, it undermines the reader’s confidence and negates any sense of suspense.
Even aside from these flaws, The Calling does little to separate itself from its pulpier cousins. Dialogue rarely rises above that of a television procedural, characterizations are often wooden if not self-contradictory, and the novel as a whole fails to develop any real sense of urgency – in fact, most readers will recognize the twists well ahead of the characters.