Book Review: Pharo and the Murder at Smoke Lake

Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

An entertaining murder mystery chock-full of real history

The year is 1914, and archduke Ferdinand has just been assassinated. While Europe and the rest of the world reels from the coming repercussions of this act, halfway across the world in Canada, life goes on. 

Amateur sleuth, Pharo Simmons is excited to be interviewing the famed author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. When she finally meets him, however, he is distracted by the drowning of his gracious host railway magnate, Mason Caulfield. Worse still, Doyle is convinced that Caulfield’s death was no accident. 

When Pharo hears the details of the case, a careful man who could not swim venturing out in a rowboat alone with no life vest, she agrees. With a possible war hanging over Europe, Doyle cannot delay his trip home, so he entrusts the case to Pharo. 

The only thing more dangerous than hunting a killer is being hunted by one. As Pharo begins her investigation, she realizes that Mortimer Hanus, the most dangerous man she knows, and the one she had been instrumental in putting in prison, has been released. His first agenda becomes terrifyingly clear when he sends his most trusted assassin after her. With her husband working to exonerate one of their friends, Pharo is left to her own devices. Now she must solve the mystery of the train magnate’s murder while avoiding the same fate. 

The second book in a series, Pharo and the Murder at Smoke Lake is a historical crime novel that includes real people and events. Reading the previous book would most likely be beneficial, as the novel explains what is happening in each storyline but more in the manner of reminding return readers where the last book left off.

I really enjoyed the set-up to this novel; Pharo’s arch-nemesis is released just as she finds the trail of another murderer. We’ll have to find out whether Pharo will find her prey before her hunter finds her. For a while as she’s ducking in and out of the hotel to find clues, it almost turns into a full-on cat-and-mouse game, only with her being fully aware of how precarious her situation is and finding it fun anyway. 

Murder at Smoke Lake balances its fiction to nonfiction beautifully. It weaves the whole novel around the imminent war, working threads of fact into the fictional world and making the entire story feel more authentic. Certain aspects of the novel are true. Some, like Arthur Conan Doyle’s tour of Canada, obviously so, while others, like Leo Frank’s trial, are much less well-known. 

Like most good historical novels, this one had me trawling the internet to find the facts behind many of the events in the story. While the historical aspects add a lovely flavor to the story, Murder at Smoke Lake aims for the right vibe rather than perfection, allowing the language to be conversational and the characters more relatable for modern readers.

There might be too many moving parts in Murder at Smoke Lake though. There are four concurrent storylines that have little to do with each other, and this makes it difficult to focus on any single segment. It can be disorientating being pushed back into a storyline that hasn’t cropped up for a while. There weren’t many themes in common connecting the various sections; they didn’t even share characters except for the two storylines that Pharo carried.

The true highlight here: The time period setting, melding of history and fiction, and several of the sparkling characters are a delight to read.

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