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Inspector Green Mystery #5
Honour Among Men
Inspector Green is coping with an office job, still eager to get back into the day-to-day fray of policing. His chance comes when an unidentified woman is drowned in the Ottawa River. In her possession is a Medal for Bravery from a peacekeeping mission. As Green and his team dig deeper into the military past, Green finds himself sucked not only into the murky past of a peacekeeping unit but into the high-stakes present of a federal election race. What crime was committed in Yugoslavia more than a decade ago? Is someone still killing to prevent that secret from coming to light? And does the diary of a dead soldier hold the key?
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
8 people are currently reading
112 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Fradkin
29 books163 followersBarbara Fradkin (nee Currie), an award-winning Canadian mystery writer and retired psychologist whose work with children and families provides ample inspiration for murder. She is fascinated by the dark side and by the desperate choices people make.
Her novels are gritty, realistic, and psychological, with a blend of mystery and suspense. She is the author of three series, including ten novels featuring the exasperating, quixotic Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green, and three short novels about country handyman Cedric O'Toole which provide an entertaining but quick and easy read. FIRE IN THE STARS is the first book in her new mystery thriller series which stars passionate, adventurous, but traumatized aid worker Amanda Doucette.
Fradkin's work has been nominated for numerous awards, and two of the Inspector Green books have won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. Fradkin was born in Montreal but lives in Ottawa.
Series:
* Inspector Green Mystery
Awards:
Arthur Ellis Award
◊ Best Novel (2005): Fifth Son
◊ Best Novel (2007): Honour Among Men
Her novels are gritty, realistic, and psychological, with a blend of mystery and suspense. She is the author of three series, including ten novels featuring the exasperating, quixotic Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green, and three short novels about country handyman Cedric O'Toole which provide an entertaining but quick and easy read. FIRE IN THE STARS is the first book in her new mystery thriller series which stars passionate, adventurous, but traumatized aid worker Amanda Doucette.
Fradkin's work has been nominated for numerous awards, and two of the Inspector Green books have won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. Fradkin was born in Montreal but lives in Ottawa.
Series:
* Inspector Green Mystery
Awards:
Arthur Ellis Award
◊ Best Novel (2005): Fifth Son
◊ Best Novel (2007): Honour Among Men
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 6, 2024
A well-crafted police procedural
HONOUR AMONG MEN is a Canadian police procedural, a tightly woven tale of threads drawn from a number of disparate skeins – a bar brawl and subsequent murder in a sleazy pub in Halifax; the subsequent murder of the victim’s girlfriend in Ottawa and the attempted murder of one of the investigating detectives; the disappearance of a homeless woman who witnessed the murder; police politics; power politics and a Canadian election; military camaraderie; and PTSD and Canada’s peacekeeping mission in Serbia and Croatia during the break-up of former Yugoslavia.
Having lived in both Ottawa and Petawawa and having visited Halifax on a number of occasions, I can attest to the accuracy of the local geography both as to look and cultural feel. As a character, Inspector Green is credible, warm, intelligent, and completely human … right down to his near brush with the possibility of an adulterous encounter with a very attractive, intelligent female out-of-town colleague! His on-again, off-again successes and failures at communication with a surly teenage daughter are fascinating.
Brava to Barbara Fradkin who has added another go-to series to the growing canon of modern Canadian crime novels. Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
HONOUR AMONG MEN is a Canadian police procedural, a tightly woven tale of threads drawn from a number of disparate skeins – a bar brawl and subsequent murder in a sleazy pub in Halifax; the subsequent murder of the victim’s girlfriend in Ottawa and the attempted murder of one of the investigating detectives; the disappearance of a homeless woman who witnessed the murder; police politics; power politics and a Canadian election; military camaraderie; and PTSD and Canada’s peacekeeping mission in Serbia and Croatia during the break-up of former Yugoslavia.
Having lived in both Ottawa and Petawawa and having visited Halifax on a number of occasions, I can attest to the accuracy of the local geography both as to look and cultural feel. As a character, Inspector Green is credible, warm, intelligent, and completely human … right down to his near brush with the possibility of an adulterous encounter with a very attractive, intelligent female out-of-town colleague! His on-again, off-again successes and failures at communication with a surly teenage daughter are fascinating.
Brava to Barbara Fradkin who has added another go-to series to the growing canon of modern Canadian crime novels. Definitely recommended.
Paul Weiss
December 15, 2020
Barbara Fradkin certainly has a dark side, as evidenced by this installment of the Inspector Green series. A violent murder traces back to a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, a suicide of one of the UN peacekeepers, a subsequent unsolved murder, political intrigue, military involvement and a police detective brutally assaulted all combine to make this a fast read and well-thought out book with twists and turns to keep the reader glued to the page.
Warning: There are some explicitly brutal scenes in this book. If you are sensitive to images created in stories, you might want to think twice about reading this or at the very least, not read it right before bed....
Warning: There are some explicitly brutal scenes in this book. If you are sensitive to images created in stories, you might want to think twice about reading this or at the very least, not read it right before bed....
May 5, 2019
Another good Canadian author - about a Detective in Ottawa. Funny reading about places you know and can follow them on the streets.
June 27, 2024
This series takes place in Ottawa, where I live, and it's so cool to read about Inspector Green going places I go to. I'm enjoying this a lot!!
July 10, 2024
Another good story with our intrepid Inspector Green from the Ottawa Police.
This was an interesting story in that it involved the military and peacekeeping forces. I liked the way that Fradkin wove the events of 10 years in the past into the events and crimes of the present.
The story involved the unsolved murder of a former army private in a drunken brawl in a bar in Nova Scotia, the suicide of an army private after serving in the Canadian forces as part of a peace keeping unit in Croatia and Serbia. The murder 10 years later of a woman who was engaged to a member of the peacekeeping unit, they mysterious disappearance of an old bag lady, the near beating to death of a young Ottawa police detective.
There was a lot of action in this story and very little about Green’s home life. We do see that he is a red-blooded male because of his reaction to a female inspector from Nova Scotia.
Sargent Sullivan comes back into the story, and I was glad to see him.
I am quite happy reading an Inspector Green story because the author does concentrate on the crime and on how it is solved. I am never sure who the guilty person is until the end.
I do like to read about Inspector Green’s personal life, but I am also glad it does not take over the story.
I am always amazed about how authors can write a story and keep all the parts straight and not get lost in the story telling. I guess that is why they have editors.
This is the 5th book in the series and I think it is the best story and best written. I will continue to read Inspector Green.
This was an interesting story in that it involved the military and peacekeeping forces. I liked the way that Fradkin wove the events of 10 years in the past into the events and crimes of the present.
The story involved the unsolved murder of a former army private in a drunken brawl in a bar in Nova Scotia, the suicide of an army private after serving in the Canadian forces as part of a peace keeping unit in Croatia and Serbia. The murder 10 years later of a woman who was engaged to a member of the peacekeeping unit, they mysterious disappearance of an old bag lady, the near beating to death of a young Ottawa police detective.
There was a lot of action in this story and very little about Green’s home life. We do see that he is a red-blooded male because of his reaction to a female inspector from Nova Scotia.
Sargent Sullivan comes back into the story, and I was glad to see him.
I am quite happy reading an Inspector Green story because the author does concentrate on the crime and on how it is solved. I am never sure who the guilty person is until the end.
I do like to read about Inspector Green’s personal life, but I am also glad it does not take over the story.
I am always amazed about how authors can write a story and keep all the parts straight and not get lost in the story telling. I guess that is why they have editors.
This is the 5th book in the series and I think it is the best story and best written. I will continue to read Inspector Green.
March 5, 2025
Inspector Green is on his way to work when his eye catches flashing red lights, police cars, a coroner’s van and yellow tape by the aqueduct. He stops the car, excited by the possibility of a case. As the officer in charge of Major Crimes, he has a team of detectives to handle the frontline fieldwork, but enjoys getting his own hands on a case. It gives him an excuse to avoid the office with his memos, reports, email and phone messages, and do what he loves, chasing down clues and following leads. Most of the time he feels trapped, a middle management bureaucrat, caught between the fieldwork he loves and the senior officers who battle it out in the committee rooms of the Elgin Street Headquarters of the Ottawa Police.
What he sees is a woman wearing a man’s old jacket lying face down in the mud. Her body shows no readily apparent trauma but she looks thin and sickly. The pathologist on site says he’ll know more after the autopsy, but he believes the body was moved after death, dumped in a place she would not be found for several days. After the death is confirmed a homicide, an investigation begins that will spread a complicated web of clues that lead to the Halifax police, the senior brass at CFB Petawawa, the Department of Defense and an upcoming federal election campaign office.
Among the victim’s effects are two items that begin the hunt: a rail ticket stub that leads them to Staff Sergeant Kate McGrath in Halifax and a Medal for Bravery awarded to Corporal Ian MacDonald in 1993 that takes them to a sheep farm in the Annapolis Valley. McGrath identifies the dead woman as Patricia Ross, the girlfriend of Danny Oliver, a soldier who served on a UN peacekeeping mission in Croatia with his friend Ian MacDonald. Danny died in a bar room brawl about ten years ago and McGrath, a constable at the time, investigated his death, but the killer was never found. Danny died in a hunting accident at his home.
As Green helps his detectives put together the events that led to the woman’s muddy grave, he reconnects with “Twiggy”, a homeless woman he has befriended over the years who might have witnessed some of what happened. But it quickly becomes evident that the roots of the crime lie back in Yugoslavia and before he can uncover those facts, he must gain access to military records, interview the top brass at the Canadian Forces Base in Petawawa, question a rising star in the liberal party and visit a ritzy condo in Ottawa. In the process, one of his team is critically injured and more dead bodies begin to pile up.
Brian Sullivan has just returned to Major Crimes after a short stint in Strategic Planning. Passed over multiple times for promotion and feeling disillusioned, he moved on to advance his career. On his return he finds the CID has appointed a new Superintendent. Barbara Devine is a controlling mini manager, always snapping at Green, determined to have her stats in the annual report look good. Green makes every effort to avoid her.
The case takes readers back to a time when Canadians were confronted by their government’s part in overseas peacekeeping missions. To the day when General Romeo Dallaire, a highly respected general, returned to Canada with severe Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome and the public learned how many soldiers encountered situations overseas that haunted them when they returned.
Fradkin explains in easy-to-understand terms, the complex political situation in Yugoslavia, where the Serbs and the Croats, were fighting each other and dividing up the country while the UN forces were trying to enforce a peace process. Neither the Serbs nor the Croats wanted the peacekeepers, refused to respect the UN flag and simply continued to kill each other. The Canadians often found themselves in life threatening situations, without the resources to defend themselves. Leaders of the military from the various countries making up the mission, never had an overall plan of what to do or how to do it, instead they refused to work together and fought among themselves. The Canadians often found themselves in the position of sitting ducks, perched between the Serbs and the Croats who shelled and sniped at each other. No one from either side picked up the bodies of the wounded men, women, children or the dead animals that littered the landscape, so the cleanup operations often fell to the Canadians. Many of whom returned home as broken men.
Fradkin does an excellent job describing the disorderly war and why so much went wrong. She emphasizes that although the characters in her novel are fictional, all the historical places and details are based on what actually occurred. In that chaotic mix, she poses important questions: is a man excused if he creates a crime for the greater good? If so, is he ever able to make peace with himself for those crimes, no matter how justified they were at the time? She deserves kudos for explaining a difficult situation so clearly and how it affected the characters in her story.
Ultimately what proves most valuable in sorting out the puzzle is Ian MacDonald’s diary and Fradkin intersperses excerpts from it throughout the narrative. It provides a moving account of a man’s search for meaning in an environment of death and destruction. It also conveys the feeling of the Canadian soldiers who found themselves in a foreign country and culture, never clear why they were there, but believing they were doing some good.
This is another great crime novel by a Canadian writer which is part of an ongoing series. Fradkin writes clearly, keeps the plot moving at a good pace and has organized the structure of her narrative so the diary entries are not jarring and flow with the storyline. The books in the series can each be read as a stand-alone, as the crimes investigated are discrete and separate, but there is an overall arching narrative about Green’s personal life with his wife Sharon, his two-year-old toddler Tony and Hannah, his sixteen-year-old daughter with his first wife who moved in with them nine months ago. There is also the wider story of happens at the station, the continuing drama among the detective staff and the ongoing political machinations of the senior staff, whose eyes are always on the next step up the ladder and covering their butts if things go wrong.
I am enjoying the series, reading each novel in chronological order, determined not to miss anything!
What he sees is a woman wearing a man’s old jacket lying face down in the mud. Her body shows no readily apparent trauma but she looks thin and sickly. The pathologist on site says he’ll know more after the autopsy, but he believes the body was moved after death, dumped in a place she would not be found for several days. After the death is confirmed a homicide, an investigation begins that will spread a complicated web of clues that lead to the Halifax police, the senior brass at CFB Petawawa, the Department of Defense and an upcoming federal election campaign office.
Among the victim’s effects are two items that begin the hunt: a rail ticket stub that leads them to Staff Sergeant Kate McGrath in Halifax and a Medal for Bravery awarded to Corporal Ian MacDonald in 1993 that takes them to a sheep farm in the Annapolis Valley. McGrath identifies the dead woman as Patricia Ross, the girlfriend of Danny Oliver, a soldier who served on a UN peacekeeping mission in Croatia with his friend Ian MacDonald. Danny died in a bar room brawl about ten years ago and McGrath, a constable at the time, investigated his death, but the killer was never found. Danny died in a hunting accident at his home.
As Green helps his detectives put together the events that led to the woman’s muddy grave, he reconnects with “Twiggy”, a homeless woman he has befriended over the years who might have witnessed some of what happened. But it quickly becomes evident that the roots of the crime lie back in Yugoslavia and before he can uncover those facts, he must gain access to military records, interview the top brass at the Canadian Forces Base in Petawawa, question a rising star in the liberal party and visit a ritzy condo in Ottawa. In the process, one of his team is critically injured and more dead bodies begin to pile up.
Brian Sullivan has just returned to Major Crimes after a short stint in Strategic Planning. Passed over multiple times for promotion and feeling disillusioned, he moved on to advance his career. On his return he finds the CID has appointed a new Superintendent. Barbara Devine is a controlling mini manager, always snapping at Green, determined to have her stats in the annual report look good. Green makes every effort to avoid her.
The case takes readers back to a time when Canadians were confronted by their government’s part in overseas peacekeeping missions. To the day when General Romeo Dallaire, a highly respected general, returned to Canada with severe Post Traumatic Distress Syndrome and the public learned how many soldiers encountered situations overseas that haunted them when they returned.
Fradkin explains in easy-to-understand terms, the complex political situation in Yugoslavia, where the Serbs and the Croats, were fighting each other and dividing up the country while the UN forces were trying to enforce a peace process. Neither the Serbs nor the Croats wanted the peacekeepers, refused to respect the UN flag and simply continued to kill each other. The Canadians often found themselves in life threatening situations, without the resources to defend themselves. Leaders of the military from the various countries making up the mission, never had an overall plan of what to do or how to do it, instead they refused to work together and fought among themselves. The Canadians often found themselves in the position of sitting ducks, perched between the Serbs and the Croats who shelled and sniped at each other. No one from either side picked up the bodies of the wounded men, women, children or the dead animals that littered the landscape, so the cleanup operations often fell to the Canadians. Many of whom returned home as broken men.
Fradkin does an excellent job describing the disorderly war and why so much went wrong. She emphasizes that although the characters in her novel are fictional, all the historical places and details are based on what actually occurred. In that chaotic mix, she poses important questions: is a man excused if he creates a crime for the greater good? If so, is he ever able to make peace with himself for those crimes, no matter how justified they were at the time? She deserves kudos for explaining a difficult situation so clearly and how it affected the characters in her story.
Ultimately what proves most valuable in sorting out the puzzle is Ian MacDonald’s diary and Fradkin intersperses excerpts from it throughout the narrative. It provides a moving account of a man’s search for meaning in an environment of death and destruction. It also conveys the feeling of the Canadian soldiers who found themselves in a foreign country and culture, never clear why they were there, but believing they were doing some good.
This is another great crime novel by a Canadian writer which is part of an ongoing series. Fradkin writes clearly, keeps the plot moving at a good pace and has organized the structure of her narrative so the diary entries are not jarring and flow with the storyline. The books in the series can each be read as a stand-alone, as the crimes investigated are discrete and separate, but there is an overall arching narrative about Green’s personal life with his wife Sharon, his two-year-old toddler Tony and Hannah, his sixteen-year-old daughter with his first wife who moved in with them nine months ago. There is also the wider story of happens at the station, the continuing drama among the detective staff and the ongoing political machinations of the senior staff, whose eyes are always on the next step up the ladder and covering their butts if things go wrong.
I am enjoying the series, reading each novel in chronological order, determined not to miss anything!
April 12, 2018
I think this is the best of the series that I've read so far.
August 10, 2019
Good writing
August 25, 2022
Another excellent book in the Mike Green series!
March 18, 2015
A young woman, evidently hard-drinking and possibly a prostitute, is found by the Canal at the opening of Honour Among Men, Barbara Fradkin's fifth Inspector Green novel, but it soon becomes clear that her death is far more complicated than that characterization might suggest. Inspector Green's investigation leads him first to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then to Petawawa, the Canadian Forces military base not far from Ottawa; the investigation also leads back in time to the break-up of Yugoslavia and the UN peacekeeping mission there in the early 1990s. When one of his own officers is critically injured in the course of the investigation, Inspector Green must summon all his resources and intelligence to out-think the killer, who is leaving a growing pile of bodies in his wake.... Inspector Green is one of the more interesting protagonists in crime fiction today: not altogether likeable, but driven by his sense of justice and able to use his intuition to see beyond the obvious to finally attain the truth. This particular novel in the series focuses on military matters and how Canadians perceive their role in the international "peace-keeping" community, which was quite fascinating. And, of course, the story itself is well-plotted and fairly clued, always of paramount importance in a crime novel! I enjoy Fradkin's writing style and her psychological insights into the way different people think, and this novel was no exception. As ever, it's always better to have read a series in chronological order, but it's not entirely required in order to understand what is going on in this series. Recommended.
October 28, 2020
Canadian author Barbara Fradkin’s first novel in her Inspector Green series takes place in Ottawa and Halifax, exotic locales to some of us south-of-the-border readers, but both the setting and the characters are rendered beautifully, if not always sympathetically. Canada Tourism probably won’t appreciate it, but local police forces should.
Inspector Michael Green has been stuck in an office job but gets back into the field when a homeless woman he knew is found dead. In her hand is a medal for bravery given during a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. What is Twiggy doing with the medal? What connection does her death have with the soldier who was awarded it?
Fradkin keeps the reader guessing as the story moves from an isolated death to a high-stakes election campaign. Green is aided by an eager detective from Halifax who’s been pursuing the death of a Bosnian vet and discovers how the two cases are related. The characters, even the doomed Twiggy, are nicely drawn.
Excerpts from another soldier’s war diary are interspersed with the present-day investigation, revealing further clues to the higher-ups involved in a cover-up of a crime committed during the Balkan conflict.
Honour Among Men suffers only from an unmemorable title and an uninspired cover design, but the writing is clean and smooth, and the story draws you in, slowly but inexorably.
Inspector Michael Green has been stuck in an office job but gets back into the field when a homeless woman he knew is found dead. In her hand is a medal for bravery given during a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. What is Twiggy doing with the medal? What connection does her death have with the soldier who was awarded it?
Fradkin keeps the reader guessing as the story moves from an isolated death to a high-stakes election campaign. Green is aided by an eager detective from Halifax who’s been pursuing the death of a Bosnian vet and discovers how the two cases are related. The characters, even the doomed Twiggy, are nicely drawn.
Excerpts from another soldier’s war diary are interspersed with the present-day investigation, revealing further clues to the higher-ups involved in a cover-up of a crime committed during the Balkan conflict.
Honour Among Men suffers only from an unmemorable title and an uninspired cover design, but the writing is clean and smooth, and the story draws you in, slowly but inexorably.
November 8, 2012
Barbara Fradkin goes from strength to strength in her novels. Canada has many good mystery writers and she is among the best. I like the Ottawa setting (although Green heads east in order to solve this crime), and the plot involving Canada's peace-keeping troops works very well indeed. I believe this one received a best crime novel of the year award – and richly deserves it.
October 21, 2015
From the first novel i already fell in love with mike and brian, i admire his relationship to sharon. This one as expected had a lot of characters and twist unexpected. It was a nice read, to satisfy my mystery novel fix
June 10, 2010
This was a random selection a book bazar and it was such good read. The setting and characters were very interesting.
January 4, 2015
Interesting fictional treatment of a (still) hot topic.
February 15, 2015
worth reading
Good story, brings you along on an interesting journey but the end is odd. Not sure if they found the mastermind behind the murders or not.
Good story, brings you along on an interesting journey but the end is odd. Not sure if they found the mastermind behind the murders or not.
August 6, 2015
Another good read i like this series and this one had a good story line.
Want to read
December 29, 2018Synopsis: Green gets back into the fray when a woman drowns in the Ottawa River. Why does she have a Medal for Bravery? Yugoslavia?
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews