After the magnum opus called River City, it took Farrow (Trevor Ferguson) a long time to resume his Emile Cinq-Mars series, but it was worth the wait. Now retired, Cinq-Mars finds himself and his wife in their gravest danger yet as he is pulled into the investigation of the murder of a couple—and two investigating police officers—on a farm not far from his own in Quebec. I will say up front that the plot is about as far-fetched as they come. You’ll guess part of it early on, and as it begins to unfold, you’ll just have to suspend disbelief and enjoy the interactions between Cinq-Mars and the other characters. His old partner, Bill Mathers, makes a few key appearances, but the most intense part of the story, until the melodramatic ending, takes place in New Orleans. Farrow is unusually specific for a writer, setting much of the important action in the Hilton Garden Inn—and Hilton probably hasn’t awarded him any bonus points as a result. Hilton fares much better than the FBI, however, but you’ll just have to see that for yourself. What makes the book so compelling, as in the previous Cinq-Mars stories, is the characters and their relationships. At the center of The Storm Murders is the relationship between Cinq-Mars and his much younger, American wife, Sandra. She is thinking of leaving him. Their relationship as a couple is fascinating, and Sandra becomes much more of a full character here than in the previous books. We root for Cinq-Mars to keep her, because she is the anchor he so desperately needs. But he also needs his work. As he thinks in one passage, prior to his retirement, he got to use his brain every day to solve crimes, then come home to his farm and use his hands and body to take care of his horses. Now, his brain has nothing to do except try to solve—fruitlessly—English crossword puzzles. So when the opportunity to help out on a murder case arises, and when the invitation comes directly from an FBI agent, the decision is easy, and even Sandra supports it. If they only knew….

Highly recommended, and apparently, despite having a definite conclusion, not the end of the story, as two more books in “The Storm Murders Trilogy” follow. ( )

I really liked this book till the ending. It has several plot twists and kept you wondering who was really behind the murders. It had several good mini-climaxes with building suspense. What I disliked was the several concluding chapters where the antagonist and protagonist have dialogue to explain what happened and why it happened. I do like a book that wraps up a few outstanding unexplained questions but, this was explanation of most of the book. ( )

Farrow is the pen name that acclaimed Canadian writer Trevor Ferguson selected when he decided to try his hand at writing genre fiction, and, if I have this right, this is his fourth book featuring detective Émile Cinq-Mars and the first of a planned “storm murders” trilogy.
In this mystery/thriller, prickly retired Montreal Sergeant-Detective Cinq-Mars finds himself flattered and cajoled and inevitably drawn into helping in the investigation of a rural Quebec double-murder that culminated in the additional slaying of two young Sûreté du Québec police officers lured to the remote farmhouse by a phone call.
Perhaps Cinq-Mars decides to aid this investigation because he is intrigued by the crime itself, the lack of apparent motive, and the absence of the killer’s footprints in the newly fallen snow around the house. Perhaps it is the puzzling entreaties of a senior FBI agent, looking for answers in a case that’s way out of his jurisdiction. Perhaps it is the bleak persistence of a Canadian winter making the days weigh heavy on Cinq-Mars’s insufficiently occupied brain. Or perhaps it is his wife Sandra’s startling intimation that she might leave him, making the investigation a welcome preoccupation that might enable him to in some way resurrect the man she’d fallen in love with.
The FBI agent, frustratingly close-mouthed, at least reveals that the deaths of the Quebec couple share certain grisly similarities with a series of murders in the United States. All have involved a married couple, always they’ve occurred after a major calamity. As none of the neighbors know much about the couple, relatively new arrivals to the area, and in the hope of finding out more details that would suggest a connection among these deaths, Cinq-Mars travels to New Orleans. The first pair of murders occurred there, shortly after Hurricane Katrina. Sandra accompanies him, because the trip promises to be a semi-vacation. Both she and Cinq-Mars hope a change of marital venue will help them reconnect.
Booklist has called the Cinq-Mars books “the best series in crime fiction today,” and this is the first of them I’ve read. Farrow’s writing style, honed by writing literary fiction, is confident and sophisticated, and the book starts strong. In general, the characters and setting are interesting and well-developed, especially good-humored multi-racial NOPD detective Pascal Dupree and ambitious hotel security chief Everardo Flores, who enliven every scene they’re in. Unfortunately, the plot was not as robust as these other elements. I guessed early on (and I’m not a particularly insightful guesser) why the FBI was interested in this series of murders. Farrow receives praise from some reviewers for writing character-driven mysteries, but for my taste, Cinq-Mars’s examinations of his feelings about religion, his wife, and retirement are rather too long. The denouement also was drawn out past the point of believability, including both conversation and events that seemed unlikely.
While this book has much to recommend it, especially for admirers of the series, in the end it requires some suspension of disbelief. ( )

A special thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

THE STORM MURDERS by John Farrow is a suspenseful crime thriller mixed with tons of wit. Loving this so called “retired” Emile Cinq-Mars, Montreal police detective, who cannot seem to stay in the senior zone, or away from trouble, even in the US.

Emile is called out of retirement as the FBI wants someone on the ground in Canada after a murder of a married couple at an isolated Quebec farmhouse, during a severe storm.

When several murders began occurring around the US, in the aftermath of a natural disaster, the FBI wants to bump up the investigation especially after the last one when two cops on the scene were gunned down.

A hurricane—Katrina in New Orleans, a tornado in Alabama, a North Dakota flood, and California, a small earthquake with mild property damage. In the aftermath, a killer strikes. So is this individual traveling to disaster zones to perpetuate his crimes? So possibly the killer got impatient waiting for a disaster, and settled for a local storm, which could mean he was nearby—a Quebecois?

Cinq-Mars does not suffer from any lack of activity and contrary to his prior speculations he hardly missed his job. His wife did not want him to get killed on the job, so she was the guiding principal behind his retirement. The former Montreal city detective weighed more than his wife’s concerns about his imminent and violent death before choosing to retire.

Emile, a religious man and his younger wife, Sandra who has a horse business, decide to mix a little business with pleasure and take off to New Orleans, as a background investigation to see what all the cases may tell him or if they are connected in some way. After all it is just a consult, so how dangerous could it be? (this part was so much fun)

They rarely traveled, with the horses, unless it was a week in New Hampshire where her mother resided or horse fairs and competitions or an occasional trip to Florida and the islands. However, now New Orleans, where they hoped to find the city in revival mode after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, but really did not know what to expect and hopefully would have some downtime to enjoy one another for some casual fun.

The murderers seem to be methodical and precise. Calculated, and more professional than normal. The victims seem to have died early and were spared any prolonged physical or psychological agony. Each victim loses his or her finger, and the rings on it, but in Alabama the medical examiner declared positively that the fingers were removed postmortem. So they did not suffer. From Louisiana, to Connecticut depended on the ME. How are these victims targeted? A serial killer? A copy cat? Does the killer hate cops as is he trying to outsmart them?

However, when the couple arrive in NOLA, they no more than check in to their hotel, The Hilton Garden Inn, when strange things begin happening, from robbery, a break-in, an abduction, and then demands. The abduction occurred when the local authorities took him out drinking and on the town--he knows all too well about investigations being corrupt. Where is his wife? With all this action, Emile is back in the game and is questioning the Big Easy’s finest, the FBI, and the hotel staff about his wife’s whereabouts. When Cinq-Mars hears the words, Danziger Bridge from the kidnappers, he is feeling anything but southern hospitality, and someone wants him out of this state.

With the shock of their misadventure lingering, they could not wait to return home, to some peace, even with more snow than when they left. He hopes he is off the case, and not interested in any more drama, as after all he is retired and does not need the garbage; until he decides he may want to after all. It may be too good to pass up, when the next of the storm murders occur in Alabama, and back to Quebec where the intensity and danger heats up, focused on Emile and Sandra.

This was my first book by Canadian writer, John Farrow (pen name of Trevor Ferguson), and really enjoyed his well-developed characters, especially Cinq-Mars, and Sandra (and her mouth); loved the author’s style with a perfect mix of wit, corruption, money laundering, mystery, crime, and suspense. Look forward to reading more of this series!

Note: A new trilogy of John Farrow crime novels, The Storm Murders, has been sold to Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press in New York and will appear under the Minotaur imprint. The first comes out in May, 2015, under the same name, "The Storm Murders." The second. "Seven Days Dead" follows in 2016, and the third, "The Talisman Quarry," will come out in the same year or in 2017. More crime novels are to follow the trilogy ( )

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