Overexposed: A Granville Island Mystery

This is--despite the fact that the protagonist is a man--effectively a cosy mystery set in Vancouver, British Columbia, the city in which I happen to reside. The author, Michael Blair, demonstrates a certain amount of professional competence. Nevertheless, it is evident that he his still early in his journeyman days as a novelist. His basic wordsmithing is solid, if not particularly memorable. He has the typical cosy characters all firmly in place: the protagonist, Tom McCall, who is the owner of a small business, his slightly ditzy sidekick, his obnoxious sister who turns out--maybe--to be not so bad after all, the over-talkative local cop (who is like no VPD constable I've ever encountered, but that's almost to be expected in a cozy.) The story, such as it is, revolves around the unknown middle-aged man who had crashed the protagonist's fortieth birthday party. When, on the following morning and still a bit bleary-eyed from the previous night's revels, Tom McCall stumbles up toward the dock of his floating home (NOT, we are emphatically informed, his "houseboat"), he discovers Mr. Mysterious is still aboard, sitting lifeless on the roof, and generally making himself about as inconvenient as an uninvited corpse can be. As the plot progresses, it becomes evident that Mr. Unknown may or may not have been in possession of a valuable McGuffin that he may or may not have hidden someplace, perhaps with the increasingly exasperated protagonist. Needless to say, the existence of a McGuffin in a mystery story implies the presence of shadowy, dubious and dangerous characters in hot pursuit of it. Mr. Blair is already a good enough writer to recognize quality when he writes a knock-off, so "Overexposed" boasts of an antepenultimate scene that is recognizably akin to one of Dashiell Hammett's most famous and brilliant efforts. "Overexposed" explores no new ground, contains at least one supposed twist that should be almost painfully obvious to any true mystery fan from the very moment the preliminary groundwork is laid for it, and introduces no particularly memorable characters. Nevertheless, it is well-enough done that I have reasonable hopes that author Blair will advance his skills with each of the inevitable sequels to come. Hardly great, but still good--that seems worth four stars to me.