Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
Here is a woman who carries a quantity of baggage: not technically a single mother but one who gave up her baby for adoption and who now has a guilt-ridden relationship with Bonnie, the spiky teen-ager. This is Nora Watts, part native American, part Palestinian, a private eye based in Vancouver and deeply involved with an ex-cop, Brazuca.
Nora is Kamal’s series character: a protagonist with two appearances behind her and, to judge from this one, a welter of violence and lust surpassing that of James Bond. For where 007 needs a license to kill Nora kills with impunity – although with justification, having in a previous adventure shot the mistress of a Vietnamese gangster and put a life-changing bullet in the gangster’s bowels. He is Dao: a hit man, psychopath and esteemed Head of Security for a mining company in Sumatra. Now, crippled with pain and hate, he is stalking Nora through the States and Canada bent on revenge.
But he has met his match because, while hunted by his hired heavies: from Detroit to Vancouver, away to Jakarta and back to the Rockies - Nora is watching all the time for her chance to turn the tables: to dodge the minions, get round behind Dao and eliminate him before he reaches her. Her motivation is primaeval, Bonnie the hostage to fortune to be guarded at all costs. The girl is the catalyst providing justification for all the chases, abductions and shootouts in this wild story.
Nora has powerful support in a coterie of disparate individuals. Brazuca is fiercely protective despite rejection: a rounded character whose sexual aura scorches the page whereas grieving Leo, the gay dog-minder, transfers sad love for his dead partner to Nora’s daft mongrel, Whisper. There is Simone: drag queen by night, cypher expert by day, loyal to the bone. And there is background.
Kamal’s locations are highly coloured: rundown neighbourhoods and dark bars contrasting with the pampered elegance of mansions and grand hotels, the erstwhile homes of oil barons and their indulged children. There’s the cabin near Whistler, and snowstorms, Vancouver in the rain, tropical beaches and limpid lagoons, sand and sun and inevitably, blood.
This is a rampageous romp in the modern idiom with an underlying theme of sacrifice. Mothers will recognise that and accept it as rote, going on to enjoy Nora Watts, the swashbuckling hero, a woman of inviolate principle who makes her own rules. Hardly a role model but certainly a brilliant companion for dark days. All hail to escapist literature and Sheena Kamal in particular.
