Customer Reviews

The Calling

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Inger Ash Wolfe's "The Calling" is a departure from the standard serial killer novel. The heroine is a few years shy of being a senior citizen. She is sixty-one year old Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, who polices the small Ontario town where she was born, Port Dundas in Westmuir County. Hazel is a real piece of work: She is divorced from Andrew Pedersen after a marriage of thirty-six years and she is not particularly close to her two grown daughters. Because of the excruciating pain brought on by her bad back, she has become dependent on painkillers and alcohol. Of an evening, she will pop a Percocet washed down with a small glass of Bushmills whiskey. Hazel lives with "a force of nature," her eighty-seven year old mother, Emily, the town's former mayor. Emily plays poker with her friends, tries to control Hazel's diet (a typical breakfast is a flavorless egg-white omelet, sprouted whole-grain flax, and high-fiber toast), and is just plain bossy.

Most of the time, Hazel is not called upon to do any serious detective work. After all, her patch is a sleepy little place where nothing much ever happens. She is serving as interim commander because Gord Drury, the former boss, retired and was never replaced. Ian Mason, the head of the Central Division of the Ontario Police Services, "is the worst kind of police bureaucrat: capricious and jolly about it." He would like nothing better than to eliminate the Port Dundas detachment as a cost-cutting move.

Everything changes when a cancer-ridden woman named Delia Chandler is found murdered and mutilated. Her mouth is "rent open in a silent cry." The crime scene is bizarre, with no sign of forced entry. It seems that Delia had welcomed the killer into her home and allowed him to do as he wished. Hazel and her team, including Detective Sergeant Ray Greene, Detective Howard Spere, Detective Constable James Wingate, and Detective Sergeant Adjutor Sevigny, are on the trail of a most unusual criminal who is both clever and methodical. Adding to their troubles, the police must cope with an impatient press and panicked townspeople who are demanding quick results. When evidence turns up indicating that a serial killer who targets the terminally ill is on the loose, Hazel fears that may be in way over her head. In her desperation to solve the case, she ignores standard procedure, conducting her investigation (some of which falls outside her jurisdiction) on her own and in secret, and withholding vital information from the public. She believes that this case may make her career or destroy it.

Wolfe uses the third person omniscient narrator to tell the story, primarily from Harriet's viewpoint. In addition, she provides a glimpse into the mind of the killer, who calls himself Simon. He is "a phantom in a dark coat" who seems to be a religious fanatic. His twisted agenda impels him to travel across Canada, visiting his victims at their invitation and then dispatching them to the hereafter. The author develops her suspenseful plot with great care. Her descriptive writing is superb; she expertly contrasts the bucolic setting with Simon's disturbing acts of violence.

The characters are beautifully delineated. Hazel is a formidable but flawed woman with a dry sense of humor. She is a technophobe who hates cell phones and computers, but is also a savvy investigator who uses whatever tools are needed (both people and computers, as it turns out) to find the perpetrator. Greene, Harriet's deputy, has always been loyal to her, but as time passes, he becomes uncomfortable with her unorthodox "buffet style policing." Detective Constable Wingate has great instincts; he offers valuable insight and a mature perspective that is unusual in someone so young. Simon is a bizarre villain who does not fit the usual stereotypes. He is careful, extremely organized, and highly intelligent. "His touchstones were patience and preparation." But who is he really? Is he a psychotic angel of death, a mercy killer, or a combination of both? What exactly is his agenda and can Harriet arrest him before he completes his "mission" and disappears forever? As it turns out, nothing is simple in "The Calling." Inger Ash Wolfe has written an original and nightmarish police procedural that demonstrates just how difficult and frustrating detective work can be. As Hazel says so eloquently, "Nothing, not even a life in law enforcement, could prepare you for the wild imaginings some people, in their passionate madness, could unleash."

Personal redemption comes in many disguises and never when expected. In this off-beat mystery that hides a powerful theme behind the distracting horrors of a serial killer. Rural Port Dundas, Ontario, is the setting for a number of obscure deaths, all unlinked until a cancer-riddled elderly victim comes to the attention of Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, her small, understaffed force unprepared for a monster who has walked the streets of Point Dundas, leaving his evil stench behind. Of course, the killer does not think of himself as evil, merely assisting the final transition from life to death as his willing victims cooperate in their own dramas. What happens to these bodies afterwards defies the imagination, a bizarre ritual based on the murderer's obsessions. Traveling the countryside for his appointments with death, the "mercy" killer remains nearly invisible, leaving his gruesome corpses behind as a testament to the fleeting nature of life.

Only gradually does Micallef see a pattern emerging; with no real support from her superiors, Hazel patches together an investigative network, assembling the details of the atrocities of a misbegotten angel of death who continues to evade authorities. Hazel has more on her plate than this serial killer, bedeviled by agonizing pain in her lower back that may soon require surgery, a sprightly octogenarian mother who strictly organizes her sixty-one year old daughter's diet and brooks no challenges to her authority and the lingering sadness of a divorce after four decades of marriage. In spite her troubles, Hazel is content in her work, ensconced in the easy familiarity of a place she known all her life. As the investigation ratchets up with more dead bodies, so does the tension between the Detective Inspector and her quarry, although neither has yet named the enemy or considered how their worlds might collide. By its nature, their relationship is adversarial, although Hazel's reactions are far more predictable than the desiccated aberrations of the killer.

It is Hazel's unexpected journey through a problematic investigation that ultimately proves her mettle, her job threatened by mistakes made in the heat of the moment and a quest to wreak revenge on a man who has stolen one of the most precious people in her life. A complicated case becomes a struggle between good and evil, a reckoning with false pride and the mischief of ego: "You're pride masquerading as justice." With characters too complex to be easily defined, The Calling explores more than the obvious, Hazel finally face to face with her purest self, honed by extremity and purified by desperation. I find that I appreciate this novel far more after I have finished, aware that the building tension is not sustained until the final chapters, when all comes together in perfect symmetry. Luan Gaines/ 2008.

This has got to be one of the creepiest serial killer novels I have read, easily ranking up there with Boris Starling's "Messiah", Val McDermid's "Mermaids Singing" and Mo Hayder's "The Treatment". Also just as gruesome in its descriptiveness, thanks to the potent writing of Inger Ash Wolfe (a pseudonym) which easily elevates this entry from the hundreds of serial killers novels proliferating out there in the library crime book shelves. If you do not like your novels graphic, please stay away from this!

The writing also paints a number of memorable characters, in particular the central figure Det. Insp. Hazel Micallef, a woman in her sixties with real life issues in her personal and professional lives. In other such novels the female lead character would be provided with a strong male counterpart to soften her up and provide some unnecessary romance. Also destined to stay in one's memory is the killer, Simon, a man with a particular calling. It is quite a feat to make such a grotesque character believable without crossing the line to the far fetched and the ridiculous. It will be interesting to see if the author can duplicate this superior effort for her next book.

In short this is a literary novel (in the best sense) that keeps one turning the pages until the story reaches to its inevitable ending. Highly recommended!

Brilliant writing but so full of errors that I kept stopping to get mad. Wolfe is not Canadian or is a Canadian who lived in the U.S. for a very long time. She uses words Canadians don't ever use. (eg. Senior year and Sophomore year).

Her version of Canadian policing is straight out of a British novel; she doesn't seem to have done any research at all as to how Canadian police work (eg. Not PC but Constable). And some of her policing is just over the top, no matter what country you're in. Like when Sevigny pulls a gun on the woman who collects the mail in Port Hardy, grabs her and throws her around. And then he kicks down the door of the house! Without a warrant! Without assistance from the local authorities! And he takes the dead man's laptop!

Then he takes the laptop to the hotel's computer (which is Internet connected) and can't use it to access the internet? Try plugging the Ethernet cable into the back. It'll work just fine.
A cop says "Arterial and venous blood look different. The oxygen in venous blood makes it look redder. Arterial blood is darker." No! It's the other way around. Arterial blood carries the oxygen.

The feeling I get from this book is that it was tossed off by a very talented writer who couldn't be bothered to get her facts straight, and her editor didn't think it mattered either.

I finished this book this afternoon and said to someone on Readerville that I haven't been this creeped out by a book since I read a mystery called The Lodger when I was a young teen.

The main character in The Calling, Hazel Micallef, is a 61-year old Detective Inspector in a small town in Canada. She lives with her mother, has two grown daughters and an ex-husband and fights her back pain and her loneliness, but doesn't, until this book opens, have much occasion to fight serious crime. Until one of her town's citizens is murdered...and Micallef and her small team realize that the killer has killed 15 times before...and that he isn't done yet. The killer is a big ole bag of creepy...and Hazel and her crew are all appealing and interesting.

There's a big hoo-haa about this book because Inger Ash Wolfe is a pseudonym...there's lots of speculation as to who she really is. (The main money seems to be on it being Michael Redhill.) I have to say, I don't care who he or she is...I just want more books from this pen. It's a really great read.

This novel, about a small town female detective in Canada investigating serial murders, was surprisingly dull. The detective and acting chief, Hazel Micallef, is uninteresting. So is the investigation. The forensics are completely unrealistic: venous blood is darker than arterial (not vice versa), a forensics lab cannot identify fifteen different DNA types in old blood in just two days (and probably could not do it at all), a forensics lab would not be able to identify multiple plant-derived drugs in blood samples overnight (the backlog for a central forensics toxicology lab in Canada probably is weeks), the time of death cannot be accurately determined by a single measurement of potassium in vitreous humor, etc. One would hope that a police procedural could get something right. Based on this book, I can understand why the author writes under a pseudonym.

This is a fine novel in the rather British manner - after all, the author (whoever he/she is) is Canadian and it takes place IN Canada. Having been disapointed in three of Elizabeth George's veddy British mysteries (she's from Warren, Ohio and can fool every Brit I've recommended her TO), I'm happy with this delicious murder and its cast of characters - even the dead ones.

My only caveat is my disapointment in not being able to find books of equal enjoyment by the same author who writes under his/her own name. Ah, well, eventually he - or she - will come out of hiding. I suspect this is a writer I haven't yet read - and heaven knows that at my age I've read hundreds. I very much appreciate finding books that have no vampires... just for instance.

I've taken to re-reading Taylor Caldwell and Morris West and John O'Hara... and more recently, James Carroll (at least, he's alive).

I always feel the need to write a review for any book that I am physically incapable of putting down, and "The Calling" certainly earned its place in that group. I finished the book in less than 14 hours, which included a break for a good night's sleep, and enjoyed every minute of it. The author has crafted a tale that is both fast-paced and plot-driven, while never failing to develop the characters and the quirks that make them interesting. (I will forego a summation of the storyline, as other reviewers have already addressed that more capably than I could.) The story manages to examine human relationships under the pressure of differing moral compasses in a way that illuminates multiple points of view and parallel realities. I felt that I had come to know and appreciate each of the main characters, including the antagonist(!)

In reading some of the other reviews, I see that others are critical of police procedural and forensic errors in the story. As the daughter of a longtime inner-city police officer and a true crime buff since an alarmingly early age, I did not find the liberties taken by the author to be much of an issue. It appears to me that if errors were made - be they knowingly or unknowingly - they certainly benefited the momentum of the story, while strict adherence to medical or administrative accuracy would have made the book a chore for the reader. This is, after all, fiction.

The ending of the book, while logical and lyrical, is the reason this title earns four stars from me, rather than five. I don't know *what* I'd hoped for, but I was left slightly wanting. All in all, it's a marvelous read for anyone who enjoys a cat-and-mouse, cop-and-killer tale.

It got me from the first chapter. I was really impressed with her skills as a writer. It was not perfect, it lost a little steam in the middle and it got intense toward the end. The main character was interesting and the murderer.The minor characters were good too.
overall , i enjoyed the book and I hope to read her next one, given she uses the same name and not her real name.

Interesting read....easy, brisk pace....although somewhat formula driven with a very Hannibal-esque serial killer.

The error that "Vicki" pointed out occurring on page 70 of the book...the mistake of calling venous blood redder than arterial (she's correct, the reverse is true) is a disturbingly glaring one...really put a sour taste in my mouth. Not a typo or grammatical slip, which is something easy to miss, but a basic, obvious forensic mistake in a crime novel? Simply awful...almost unforgivable for the editor here.

Other than this, and other errors apparent to Vicki, it's an engaging novel.

I found the book in the library next to Gene Wolfe's new exquisite piece "An Evil Guest". Hmmmmm.....I wonder. The style is different....much more accessible and "obvious"...but something he may have done deliberately to create a crime novelist's style. There were certain moments within the more lyrical aspects of the book written describing the context of the actions of the killer that made me wonder. Had the filigree that I've seen from Wolfe.