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And Then I Heard The Quiet
Alyssa Hall | Friesen Press
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$17.99 | 288pp.
Langley novelist Alyssa Hall began her writing career during the COVID lockdowns of the early 2020s. Some of us in the middle classes learned to bake bread then, and some of us shuttled between depressed torpor and frantic pot banging tributes to the essential workers we usually ignored. We watched the viral catastrophe unravel our common life, and most of us did not successfully follow through on our desperately contrived pandemic projects.
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Hall has a different story to tell. Inspired by a suggestion from a dear friend, Frank Robert Giampa, to whom her latest book, And Then I Heard the Quiet, is dedicated, she started writing and in three months had completed her first book, Trusting Claire.
The debut novel, which drew on her Russian immigrant family experience and added an element of murder mystery she hastens to say was not based on family experience, was quickly followed by two more books in quick succession, Wanting Aidan and Romero Pools. All three were completed in a year and a half, winning Hall the respect and perhaps the envy of other writers whose work goes more slowly. Since Romero Pools and before And Then I Heard the Quiet, Hall published another mystery, Hero of Blackpool. Five books in four years. Difficult for the less prolific to forgive, but an impressive achievement nonetheless.
Set in rural Fort Langley in the run up to Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics, And Then I Heard the Quiet follows the troubled life of a young woman, Valerie Russo, who has come west to start a new chapter in her life and try to forget some haunting regrets about the way a relationship ended.
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She takes jobs house sitting and dog walking, and soon finds herself drawn into unsolved mysteries. She meets cute with Brian, a Mountie suffering PTSD from his experiences investigating the Robert Pickton serial murders, as well as Brian’s louche brother, who may be part of a local drug gang.
Meanwhile, Valerie has a hunch about an unsolved murder in town. All of this grim material is interspersed with a budding romance between Valerie and Brian that veers occasionally into Harlequin Romance territory. The tension between the romance and the gritty crime material can occasionally leave a reader suffering from mild narrative and emotional whiplash. But this defect is not serious enough to outweigh the pleasures this competent blend of disparate genres delivers.
Recommended beach read.Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net
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