Punishment

by Linden MacIntyre

In Punishment, his first novel since completing his Long Stretch trilogy, Scotiabank Giller-winner Linden MacIntyre brings us a powerful exploration of justice and vengeance, and the peril that ensues when passion replaces reason, in a small town shaken by a tragic death.

Forced to retire early from his job as a corrections officer in Kingston Penitentiary, Tony Breau has limped back to the village where he grew up to lick his wounds, only to find that Dwayne Strickland, a young con he’d had dealings with in prison is back there too–and once again in trouble. Strickland has just been arrested following the suspicious death of a teenage girl, the granddaughter of Caddy Stewart, Tony’s first love.

Tony is soon caught in a fierce emotional struggle between the outcast Strickland and the still alluring Caddy. And then another figure from Tony’s past, the forceful Neil Archie MacDonald–just retired in murky circumstances from the Boston police force–stokes the community’s anger and suspicion and an irresistible demand for punishment. As Tony struggles to resist the vortex of vigilante action, Punishment builds into a total page-turner that blindsides you with twists and betrayals.

Genres: Fiction, Canada, Mystery, Crime, Book Club, Adult Fiction, Mystery Thriller

432 pages, Hardcover

First published November 11, 2014

About the author

Linden MacIntyre is the co-host of the fifth estate and the winner of nine Gemini Awards for broadcast journalism. His most recent book, a boyhood memoir called Causeway: A Passage from Innocence won both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction.

Reviews

[Penny (Literary Hoarders) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh man!! Now what am I going to do?! I'm finished and it was fan-freaking-tastic!! I'm no longer going to be able to reach for this book -I finished it in a weekend. Everything has been left neglected and I just sat glued to these pages. You knew what could/was happening, but you had to, you had to sit and watch it all unfold in pure MacIntyre greatness. I'm his biggest fan. For certain. Excellent, excellent read. So many layers, so many things to think about...

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This past week the Canadian press - and Canadian communities - have been asking a lot of questions about crime and punishment. With the very public revelation of Jian Ghomeshi's criminal behaviour, the public conversation includes calls for criminal prosecution all the while enacting a sort of collective trial, sentencing and punishment in the press and social media. While listening and reading stories of his violent and repugnant behaviour, I was reading Linden MacIntyre's new book, Punishment.

Punishment is not about sexual and physical violence. Nor is it about the CBC or the media (though MacIntyre long worked for the CBC). Instead it's a book about a former prison officer, Tony Breau, who gets involved - is made to be involved - in a small town murder investigation. It's also about the consequences of telling the truth: the violence, threats and shame that attach to those who speak out (you can see, then, why it might be a book that resonated with what I was reading and hearing in the cultural conversation around violence against women). So it's a novel that takes on the 'big' crime of murder, but it's also a novel that explores the slippery boundary between what is considered criminal, and the 'crimes' outside the criminal code: betrayal in friendship, adultery and the wilful withholding of truth from others.

Punishment offers readers as nuanced and complicated exploration of guilt, punishment, retribution and reconciliation. Early on in the novel it explodes the idea that all those in prison are criminals and that all those on the 'outside' are innocent; the novel does not belabour this point, it simply makes the observation that many crimes go unrecognized and unpunished and that many criminals are in prison for complicated reasons. Much of the novel is concerned with how and if Tony can reconcile his past with his present, his moral position with an unjust society, his care for others with the certainty that the truth can be painful. (In a quintessentially Canadian literature way) this struggle is worked out in the small and isolated community, where the big bad criminals come from the United States and the city, where outsiders are suspect and when guilt is both the prelude an apology and an unavoidable state of being.

What the novel does incredibly well (and with a sort of bravery, I think) is to ask readers to consider - just consider - separating the crime from the criminal; the behaviour from the person. It can be hard to empathize. It can be hard to consider empathy. When we are betrayed by lovers or friends, when a singular crime is perpetrated against us or when we are wronged by systemic and entrenched systems, the impulse is not to empathy. The push is to retribution, to punishment. As if in the punishment itself we might understand the crime or feel differently about the criminal. I am not making a novel argument in suggesting that there might be a difference between retributive and restorative justice. Rather, I'm making an argument that this novel shows - with great care and nuance - how these forms of justice differ and what is at stake for us as individuals and as communities in taking one approach or the other.

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

My future appeared to me as a landscape suddenly revealed by the cresting of a hill. It wasn't grim but it was barren and it sprawled endlessly beyond the curve of the horizon. It was a scalding moment, delusions scoured from the surface of reality. Solitude and celibacy, I thought. And, I had to admit, under the alcoholic anesthetic, it didn't feel all that bad. Even if I reframed the words -- made them, say, abandonment and isolation -- they still described a kind of freedom. I remember stumbling to bed that night in that paradoxical state of peace that comes with knowing you have nothing left to lose.

Author Linden MacIntyre -- after a long and prominent career in Canadian broadcasting -- made a splash in 2009 with his novel The Bishop's Man. In that book, MacIntyre told the story of a "fixer" in the Catholic Church; a clerical representative of the Bishop for Cape Breton tasked with making recent sex abuse scandals disappear. It was a timely and thoughtful examination of a decent man with the contrary goals of protecting the institution of the Church and doing right by the victims of abuse. In a sense, Punishment is another look at conflict of conscience, but this time the institution under the microscope is the Canadian penal system and the victims are the convicts; and especially the career criminals who become scapegoats in the eyes of law enforcement and correctional officers.

As Punishment begins, Tony Breau has returned to the small community of St. Ninian, N.S., after a divorce and taking early retirement from his job at an Ontario penitentiary under unclear circumstances. (His final position at the prison was also unclear to me -- after a long career as a guard, Breau took some night classes and became a "case worker".) The first scene sees Breau happening upon a strange confluence of events: His first love Caddy, unseen or heard from for over thirty years, is being consoled by family as local miscreant Dwayne Strickland -- someone who Breau knew intimately in the Ontario prison system -- is being arraigned for the murder of Caddy's granddaughter. From here, information is revealed scattershot -- Breau is a teenager with Caddy, a guard with Strickland, he's married, he's waking up alone in a musty old farm house -- and very slowly, the ties between all the characters are revealed. Just as Breau seemed to be the only man within the prison system who truly believed in justice -- the only one who might breech the Blue Wall in the name of prisoners' rights -- he finds himself, in the face of community vigilantism, identifying more with Strickland than with those who would condemn him without clear evidence.

Punishment is one of those frustrating books where mysteries are set up (Why did Caddy break off communication? Why did Breau's marriage fall apart? Why was Breau forced to retire?) and when characters start to talk about these events, they break off in midsentence, or refuse to answer any more questions, or in the case of Breau, take down the bottle of whisky to forget. From their first meeting, it seems obvious that Caddy and Breau will get back together, but she doesn't answer the phone when he calls, or he mopes around and decides not to drop in on her for weeks at a time, or when one reaches out a hand, the other pulls away. This book is slooooooow and any mysteries are solved by the reader long before MacIntyre makes things plain.

Punishment is also frustrating in that everyone is black and white: Prison guards and police officers (portrayed as the most violent people in the system) think that criminals are scum, and even those who have served their time and have been released deserve anything that comes to them; an attack on an ex-con simply a pre-emptive strike before his next offense. Standing alone between the two sides is Tony Breau, trying to explain why "evil is more an adverb than an adjective", and unafraid to buck the system (in a totally passive I-am-but-an-unwilling-agent-who-cant-help-but-do-the-right-thing kind of a way). To ratchet up the theme, the decline in the circumstances of Breau's life began on 9/11, and he becomes the only person in his community who opposes the invasion of Iraq; believing it to be more vigilantism than justice. Familiar, right?

So, to get back to The Bishop's Man: There is, obviously, no excuse for priests sexually abusing children and those "fixers" who went around silencing witnesses and shuffling criminal priests off to unsuspecting communities were also participating in evil. However, and not to excuse their actions, one can see how they misguidedly believed that what they were doing was for the greater good; that the institution of the Catholic Church was more important than the ruination of individual lives (and I sincerely hope that I'm making it clear that nothing excuses the priests or the fixers here). In Punishment, it would seem that MacIntyre is trying to make a similar point: The institution of the penal system, the solidarity and continuing authority of those who work inside prisons, is thought to be more important than the rights of -- or even the lives of -- the prisoners. Systemic reform is resisted and those who won't toe the line become scapegoats. But is this really the way it is? Are penitentiaries the modern social and cultural equivalents of a millenniums-old church? They may be flawed, but I honestly don't believe they're beyond reform. The corrupt and self-interested characters representing the law and order side in this book are so cartoonishly evil that I think MacIntyre really missed the boat on framing this story as a conflict of conscience; anyone should have behaved as Breau did.

Slow and meandering, deliberately obscure and agenda-driven, this is not my favourite book by Linden MacIntyre.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Linden MacIntyre is a well-known and distinguished broadcaster with a thirty-year career with the CBC. He became widely known as a writer when he won the 2009 Scotiabandk Giller Prize, Canada’s top literary award for his novel “The Bishop’s Man”. Since then, he has written several more best sellers which continue to showcase his strong writing skills.

This fictional story published in 2014, contains themes that emerge from the work MacIntyre has done as a journalist, his characters emerging loosely from people he met as an investigative reporter and his subject matter from controversial topics heatedly discussed in the media.

Tony Breau is an idealist, a socially conscious corrections officer forced into early retirement after a number of incidents involving Dwayne Strickland, an inmate with a long-troubled history who had once lived in Tony’s home village of St. Ninian in Nova Scotia. An unfortunate incident at the Millhaven Institution in which an inmate died, began Tony’s downhill trajectory which evolved over a period of several years. Things come to a head when both Tony and Dwayne found themselves back in their home village trying to create a new life for themselves. A young girl had mysteriously died and the villagers, anxious for revenge, pinned their suspicion of murder on Strickland, although there was little evidence he was directly responsible. MacIntyre widens the exploration of the issues surrounding these events by setting his story in 2002, expanding them to the global context of 9/11 and the Iraq War. He ties the events together with a common theme, that when disaster strikes, the search for a scapegoat begins, information is manipulated, disinformation is spread and a predetermined outcome brings a solution to the problem.

In St.Ninian, the predetermined outcome was the need to rid the village of Dwayne Strickland, a man who had a long history of creating trouble there as a youth. Because of his past and evidence that was collected or inferred, the villagers decided Strickland was guilty of the murder before the case went to court and must be sent to prison to protect the community. On the world stage, a similar scenario was unfolding. The United States singled out Saddam Hussein as the man responsible for the events of 9/11 and the Iraq War, so they attacked him to keep the world safe. In both crimes, the evidence pointing to the perceived villain was scanty, but information was manipulated to fit the need and propaganda gathered believers to the cause.

Tony Breau a corrections officer at the prison in Kinston, had become alienated from his co-workers because of his progressive and idealistic views. After a serious incident in which an inmate died, Tony’s testimony at the inquiry that followed threw into question the accounts of his colleagues. Following that inquiry, Tony was isolated and ostracized for not sticking to the story the others had agreed upon, one which excused all of them for their behavior which had resulted in a disastrous outcome. Other personal events, including a brief affair with a co-worker and the dissolution of his marriage led to a forced early retirement and Tony left Ontario to get away from it all. He felt abandoned because of the way his career and marriage ended, with so much misunderstanding, untruths and unfinished business. He felt gutted and longed for solitude and peace after looking for so many years at the grim ugliness of limestone walls, chain link fences and the barb wire of the prison system. He wanted something completely different. So he headed back home to St. Ninian, the small coastal village in Nova Scotia where he grew up.

Once home, he encountered Neil Archie MacDonald, a former Vietnam veteran and hot-headed Boston police officer who also grew up in the village, retired early and returned home to run a B and B with his wife Hannah. MacDonald is a tough man. As a cop, he always felt he knew what was best in matters of crime and justice. It came from a well of moral certainty deep inside himself and so convinced him of his stance, he used physical force to enforce what he believed was his high moral purpose. His belief in taking a hard line, extends further to the wider world of international relations and so he supports the Bush/Cheney aggressive approach to the problems in the Middle East.

In MacIntyre’s narrative, Tony and Neil are two characters who illustrate a clear and distinct difference in their views on crime and justice.

There are now three people, who grew up in St. Ninian and have returned to try and restart their lives -- Tony Beau, Neil MacDonald and Dwayne Strickland. Strickland was granted early parole and was recently released from prison, a tradeoff he received for betraying his fellow inmates.

The three figures create a volatile situation when the body of Mary Stewart a young teenage girl who had been missing for five days, is suddenly discovered in Strickland’s home. Dwayne believes Tony can help him with this difficult situation because of their past history in the prison system, but Tony’s situation is complicated by his relationship with Caddy Stewart, the dead girl’s grandmother. Neil MacDonald joins this heady mix, the hard-nosed ex-cop who says everyone knows who the killer is and demands justice, ready to turn innuendo, rumour and speculation into evidence against Strickland to reach his predetermined conclusion.

MacIntyre points out that when disaster strikes, people are shaken, tension and passion drives their behavior and their first instinct is vengeance. His writing is well paced, pushing the story steadily forward so readers keep turning the pages, encountering a number of twists, betrayals and surprises. And when he reaches the final pages, he does not tie the story up in a neat package, but instead leaves what eventually happens in the lives of two men open to speculation. Like life itself, we don’t always know what will happen.

The narrative presents a realistic picture of the prison system, one we know is failing at what it was set up to accomplish. Despite mission statements, goals and good intentions, it has never delivered in its stated purpose of rehabilitation. Instead, it has become a place where inmates are isolated and dehumanized and when their time is done, they are released back into the world and expected to act like contributing citizens. The system is a product of the people who run it. They have their own assumptions about crime, the potential of rehabilitation and beliefs about their security and that of the communities they serve. It is a system that simply doesn’t work.

MacIntyre has created great characters in the three men at the heart of the novel. Dwayne Strickland is a cocky, overconfident man with a high opinion of himself and unrealistic beliefs about the way the world works. Tony Breau is the embodiment of reason, a man who understands that people are neither good nor evil and that their behavior is based on reasons that are complicated. He has been there, inhabited that space when he responded emotionally to tragedy and became party to extreme injustice. He knows that in a crisis, even reasonable people can be led to endorse or participate in irrational or criminal behavior. Neil MacDonald is a man who lives with his own brand of certainty about life, relationships, criminals, justice and rehabilitation, ready to use whatever means necessary including violence, to ensure his view is enacted.

For Tony, Neil and Dwayne, going home does not always bring what they hoped it would. Like every other place, everyone in St. Ninian has his own agenda.

MacIntrye’s novel shows the complex issues that confront the criminal justice system. He makes them understandable by wrapping them in a plausible story about ordinary people living ordinary lives in an ordinary place who have been shaken by a tragic death. He shows how these usual law-abiding people, without objective information and driven by emotion, can easily become vigilantes, because when people feel wronged, they naturally push for retribution and punishment. His story also shows how people who have similar experiences, may come to completely different conclusions about crime, punishment and justice.

With remarkable insight, MacIntrye includes the emerging news of a global conflict alongside his story of what happened in a little place in the middle of nowhere. It shows how events such as those in this story do not just occur in what some may consider to be a small, backward place but enlarges the discussion, to show how such events are repeated everywhere.

This is a book about crime, but it is not a crime story. It is a morality driven narrative about a crisis of conscience, a story of betrayed friendships, adultery and withholding the truth, a story about circumstances, choices made, roads taken and compromises made.

It is well told and a novel I highly recommend.

[Shirley Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

MacIntyre at the top of his game! This book was one of the best I've read in many a long year! The book is set in a small maritime Canadian town in and around 2001, The story is about a 55 year old man by the name of Tony Breau who returns home to the town where he grew up after an absence of 4 decades. Tony has suffered a lot of changes in his life. He has left his job of thirty years because of an incident that happened at the prison he was working in, and his wife of twenty years has left him. Tony finds himself falling back into the community where he grew up, and he reacquaints himself with old friends and acquaintances as well as old romantic interests. The pull of the community is strong and the majority of the people welcome Tony back with open arms. Then a tragedy occurs which brings an old acquaintance, who happens to be a former inmate, back into Tony's life. Things get messier and messier as Tony is forced to reexamine his values, his sense of justice and the consequences of retaliation and vengeance. We follow Tony as he wrestles with his conscience and while he tries to reconcile past actions and tries to assimilate present actions. Everything he believes in and holds dear is brought into question. The book rockets on at an incredible pace with so many twists, turns and surprises that I couldn't put it down. I read the book at a breakneck pace, but now I'm at a loss because I've finished. There is so much to think about and rehash in my mind after this one. MacIntyre is a novelist of extraordinary skills, and this book is one that I recommend most heartily. It's totally awesome.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

A page-turner with twists & turns, am I reading the same book everyone else is? 2 1/2 stars at best. I read 200+ pages and still didn't give a s&$t about Tony or the town. Go to the store, pick up papers, ignore the gossip, drop by to visit, go home, walk the dog, drink whiskey, watch the weather, go to bed, start over the next day. In the last 60 pages stuff unfolds but by then my heart is not in it. I did not care.

[C.A. Simonsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this brooding small town saga, Tony Breau is caught between loyalties. A retired corrections officer, Tony is a good man who strives to do what's right. But what is right when trapped between an old friend who's lost her granddaughter and an old prisoner who may not be guilty?

In Punishment, it seems that every character is haunted - punished - by his/her past. And the past has a way of catching up with people. Similar to MacIntyre's The Bishop's Man yet a story all its own, Punishment is a gripping read. Recommended.

"But how can absence make a sound, or make a presence felt?"

[Tina Siegel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Linden MacIntyre is hit and miss for me. I loved The Bishop's Man, but only made it through a quarter of The Long Stretch before giving up.

This is a hit.

Anyone who's read MacIntyre's work will recognize Punishment - the setting, the light lilt in the dialogue, the outsized characters. But it's a recognition that thrills, like going home for Christmas and knowing that your drunk, unpredictable cousin will be there.

Tony Breau is a retired corrections officer. He was living in Kingston before a traumatic, potentially criminal, incident forced him into retirement and his marriage fell apart. Now he's home in St. Ninian. Unfortunately, it isn't as peaceful as he anticipated. An old lover - Caddy - rears her still-beautiful head, and their relationship is just as complicated as it always was.

Now, though, there's also the recent death of Caddy's grand-daughter to deal with. It looks like a straight-forward case: the girl was found dead in the living room of a known drug-dealer and ex-con named Dwayne Strickland. The small town rallies around Caddy's family, and demands justice.

Tony ends up in the middle of it all, pulled by his attraction to Caddy and pushed by the murky history between himself and Strickland.

I won't say anymore about the plot - I don't want to spoil it - except to say this: MacIntyre uses the infastructure of a mystery to set up an examination of justice vs punishment, morality vs. ethics. The result is an engaging, smart, compulsive read.

[Catherine Cronin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put this down. It's a story of betrayal and small town corruption. No good deed of the hero's seems to go unpunished. Until the last page......

[Jeff Swystun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether it be television investigative reporting or writing, Linden MacIntyre is a storyteller. Until happening across this novel, I was strangely unaware of his talents as an author. I enjoyed his reporting style for years but somehow missed the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel, The Bishop's Man. Other works include The Long Stretch, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, and the 2019 work of history, The Wake. He is a true maritimer, born in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, and raised in Port Hastings, Cape Breton.

I was incredibly impressed with the simple but rich style of writing found in Punishment. There is a surprising density in the conversational approach. This story knits together a multi decade tale with insights into the legal and correction systems. Though, set on the east coast, small town Canada is in evidence throughout. It could have been set in any of the provinces or territories.

It is not without flaws. The backdrop of America’s response to 9/11 was more distracting than metaphorically helpful. Female characters were one-dimensional. Most disappointing was the too quick, too rushed resolution. However, I enjoyed the slow build and reveals. MacIntyre’s earnestness makes up for any shortcoming.

[Ryan McKenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love any book that makes reference to the East Coast and this is no different. Set in Nova Scotia, this is a thriller that will have you turning pages non stop near the end. A few surprises in the last few pages as well.

[Despina · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a slow read for me, at first, and then the interest heightened.

Although I did not learn anything new from it it did make me think about different personal situations, the reality of them, etc.
For eg., Caddy and Tony's relationship...in more romantic novels they may have fallen into each other's arms etc. In this novel it's not so simple. A whole life happened before they saw each other again. Lots of hurt feelings are still in the air, and other issues in their own lives to resolve.

I liked the Nova Scotia landscape described, and the life lived in these small Canadian towns.

[DeB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of an interview by Atlantic Monthly, of Linden MacIntyre, November, 2014:

"The same moral imperatives and the same materialistic motivation applied to the large global situation in 2002-2003 in reality and the small microcosm situation that I imagined in a little place in the middle of nowhere, where there’s this notion that by eliminating a negative presence in a community, you have made the community safe and you have protected important values and principles. Even if in doing so you have offended the most fundamental principles that keep the society safe and make it work properly, which are the principles of justice and how sometimes an obsession with law and order causes us to become a little bit blind when it comes to the fundamental principles of justice itself. And this is what happens in the book. You have an emotional response to a situation, you have it exploited by an individual with a very strong point of view, you have a scapegoat, and you have a disaster. And you have all of that happening on a global scale at the same time. It sort of came to me in a flash and I realized this is a book that I have to write down. Or it’s going to drive me crazy."

Reading this interview changed my perspective somewhat after the fact on Punishment, the latest novel by Canadian author Linden MacIntyre. His point of view and sincerity imbued the novel with a passion and energy which, unfortunately, I felt little of in the story itself.

The fly leaf guarantees a "page turner". It's not exactly riveting, although the angst, depression and sorrowful contemplation of buggered up lives did have me skimming and flipping those pages to find out where each new set of thoughts led our characters. Sometimes, in my haste, the past and present were misidentified so that I did have to go back and read more carefully to figure out when some rather hazy transitions occurred. (I really dislike muddle with POV setting and thought). It is a depressing book; a young woman has been murdered (has she?) by an ex-con (he is one), and the small Nova Scotia town hates that he came back to where he was adopted and raised. Tony Breau, former corrections officer, has also returned to the home town, marriage a bust and forced to retire due to circumstances which related to Strickland in prison. Tony's high school sweetheart is the grandmother of the dead girl and the class bully, no longer safe on the Boston police force, is now running a B&B with his wife.

The relationships are intense, complicated and almost incestuous in their small town tribal nature. One thing leads to another which leads to another which... Personally, I found myself unable to relate on any basis as the life tales intertwined, repeated themselves and trudged on bleakly.

Linden MacIntyre is masterful with language. But this book is S-L-O-W going for one promised by the publishers to "blindside...you with twists and betrayals".

As for the ending- no punch there either, which watered down the metaphilosophy intended by this story and reduced the characters' dimension.
I feel that if the story is meant to deliver a powerful message, a definitive ending is important.

However, I am the reader.

Said Linden MacIntyre, "You know what, somebody buys a book; it becomes their property. The story becomes a story that they will figure out, interpret and carry in their minds in a form that’s not always what I would have expected. Or is not always what another reader would necessarily share. In this particular book there are two aspects at the end that are left unresolved. The unresolved part is what happens next to the two principal men in the book. And life is like that."

I say, "Meh." 3.5 stars

Link to interview- http://atlanticbookstoday.ca/linden-m...

[Carolyn Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book I have read by Linden MacIntyre. His Giller prize winner, The Bishop's Man, is one of my favourite books. MacIntyre has the ability to enter the hearts and minds of his characters while keeping some things hidden. The people also seem very real to me, maybe partly because I grew up in small town Nova Scotia where the story is set.
The novel centres around a former long-time prison guard, Tony Breau. He returns to his hometown in Cape Breton after a divorce and being forced into early retirement. There he encounters Dwayne,Strickland, a former prisoner that he knew from his time working at the prison.
Linden MacIntyre has been an investigative reporter for the CBC and understands the workings of the justice system, the hierarchy in prisons and the danger of being a snitch.
Tony discovers that a teenaged girl has been found dead in in Strickland 's home , and he is being pressured to get involved in the investigation and also be a character witness for Strickland. To add to the situation, the dead girl's grandmother, Caddy, was Tony's great love when they were young. This romance ended badly. He now is drawn into an uneasy relationship with her, and love for her small dog which spends much time at his home.
Also it explores his problems with his ex-wife and an affair with another woman. Both these women worked with prisoners. I would have preferred that the book told us less about his relationship with these three women and more about his time at prison just prior to his retirement.
The other main character in the story is Neil, who bullied Tony when they were in school. He retired after some bad trouble while working as a policeman in Boston. He holds forth to the townspeople about Strickland's certain guilt and the need for revenge when he is not annoying Tony and others with his views on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
Themes of loneliness and isolation run through the book; also explored are betrayal, justice, guilt, retribution, the destructiveness of gossip, lies and truth withheld. It seems that one cannot completely trust neighbours, lovers or co-workers. There some instances of horrific revenge, but some hint of upcoming sweet revenge subtly forecast at the end.

[Gavin Stephenson-Jackman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Punishement is told by Tony Breau (MacMillan), a recently retired prison officer. Tony was involved in quelling a prison riot at Kingston Penetentiary in 2000. He finds himself at odds with his colleagues but follows the directive of his superior as to when to intervene in the situation. As a result one of the prisoners dies and Tony again finds himself at odds when he tells the truth at the inquiry which follows. With his life in danger as much from the prisoners as from his now discredited superior he is encouraged to take an early retirement. This leads him back to his home town of St. Ninian where he takes up residence.

Tony is just settling in when a local girl is found dead and the accused Dwayne Strickland turns out to be a former prisoner whom Tony has been acquainted with and has helped counsel in the past. Both Tony and Dwayne were adopted as children and in this small town in the maritimes neither was really accepted by the wider community. Tony has been gone since he left for university and made a life for himself. Dwayne has always been the bad boy and found himself locked up and here he is again locked up.

Tony gets drawn into the investigation of Maymie’s death by his previous association with Dwayne and Caddy, the girl’s grandmother. Caddy and Tony had been sweet on each other when they were younger but she cut off the relationship without really saying why after Tony was at university. Tony is still drawn to Caddy and torn as to how to react to the circumstances.

The tight knit community of St. Ninian rallies around Caddy against Dwayne. The opposition to Dwayne in the community is most evident from Neil Archie MacDonald, a retired police officer from Boston. Neil like Tony was encouraged to retire after an incident on the job. Neil is another local boy who made it good while away and is now back in town. Neil is nothing if not vocal and angry at the system, and not beyond seeking his own solutions to problems.

This was an interesting insight into a side of society that most of us never experience and into the dangers that come when vengeance replaces reason. Punishment kept me turning the pages but left me feeling I wanted more at the end. I hope that more will come in the second volume of the trilogy.

[Dale White · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much to like about this book.

Tony Breau, a corrections officer takes early retirement after telling the truth about an incident that results in the death of a prisoner. He heads back to the small community where he grew up. There he meets up with his teenage girlfriend, now a widow, whose granddaughter has died of a drug overdose in the house of Dwayne Strickland. Strickland also has returned home after spending many years in prison including one where Tony worked and tried to rehabilitate him. When the town, led by an angry ex-cop, tries to pin the death of the girl on Strickland Tony has to decide what course of action he needs to take.

MacIntyre, using Tony as the narrator does an excellent job of developing Tony's character and the dilemmas he faces. While some of the mystery is somewhat obvious there is still plenty of suspense as various characters complicate Tony's life.

And at the end of the story, we are left wondering what punishment does and maybe should mean.

[Katee · Rating 2 out of 5]

he kills the dog. what was a very strong story with very good writing fell to the cheapest trick. I am at a point in my life where I don't have any more time for manipulative writers - same for movies. The book had a fascinating story, unique environment (that I am very familiar with) and astute insight into that world. But I was really worried that the dog was too important... but I didn't think he'd actually do it.

I put the book down and wont finish it. Any writer that resorts to hurting kids or animals as a catalyst for action should be ashamed of himself. very disappointed

[Adam McPhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

MacIntyre's best book yet.

Draws interesting and unexpected parallels between the 2003 Iraq war, the infighting in small towns that often leads to outsiders being scapegoated, and the costs of being perceived as a bureaucratic whistleblower or prison rat.

His experience of hosting Canada's best investigative journalism TV program for twenty-four years pays off with his understanding of all the ways humans are fallible. Like a Jim Thompson novel set in Cape Breton.

[William Falo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this fine book a 4.5. Excellent characters and plot. Would read more from this author without a doubt.

[Ginny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really high-class murder mystery. Enthralling--a page turner for sure. I found the characters very real and engaging.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best of his books so far. Leaves you with lots to think about, especially when your reading group includes a judge.

[Georgina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, as this book progresses, it becomes a real page turner. Loved it!!!

[Michella Prokop · Rating 5 out of 5]

A page-turner.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating 4.5. I think this would make a good movie, though I have some friends who don’t like convoluted stories and lots of characters and they’ll hate it.
It’s the story of Tony Breau, formerly McMillan, his life and the small Newfoundland town where he grew up. It’s like many small towns, where most people are related and know everything about everyone and there are insiders and outsiders. Tony is adopted, so he’s part of each. He has a deep friendship with Caddy Stewart which is destroyed through events when he goes away to university. Tony goes into the correctional system as a prison guard hoping to make a difference. He’s a moral but not naive man who tries to weigh situations and do the right thing. At Kingston Penitentiary, one of the inmates is from his small hometown and he tries to help in some difficult times. Tony’s moral compass swings against others and he ends up taking early retirement and moving back home. Where he quickly becomes embroiled in local issues, whether he wants to or not. Neil Archie MacDonald, a blow hard bully and former cop draws Tony into events and his situation as not really a local, his differing world views and his belief in right threatens his peaceful retirement and even his life. The ending- last few paragraphs- are a surprise that I’m still not sure how I feel about.
Bottom line: this is the story of a man with a strong sense of morals and his struggle through his life to adhere to them.

[Deane · Rating 5 out of 5]

My copy is a first edition hard cover and signed by Canadian Linden MacIntyre which I treasure in my 'signed by author' collection.
This story starts with an event that happened in Kingston (Ontario) Penitentiary in 2000. Chapter One starts in 2002 in a small village in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
I liked this comment so much that I copied in my special book: '(no matter) how strong we are, memory punishes us, is our disease' Anna Akhmatova
Everyone knows one another in this small village; the good and the bad and the secrets. As usual, there is a bully who controls the police, the council, many of the inhabitants and does as he pleases. His name is Neil who now wants to control someone who has been away for many years working as a Parole officer and guidance counsellor in prisons...his name is Tony Breau who has come home to the village to live in an old house he bought several years ago and think about his early retirement and why that happened.
Tony meets up again with Caddy, his teenage love who cast him off with a sad letter which bothered him greatly through the years. He is now divorced, lonely and full of regretful memories of things he feels guilty about; things he went along with because solidarity counts.
I found it a most interesting and entertaining read.

[Lynette Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was one of those books that creeps up on you, and stays with you for a bit, after reading it.

Within the first 100 pages or so, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go on reading. As I'm sure my fellow readers agree, life is short so you don't want to waste it on a book you're not enjoying. However, I persevered and soon the characters grew on me.

I found it interesting that it was set in Canada, with a number of references to Ontario (where I live). This made it feel very real, and I always enjoy reading a reference to a place where I've been - Kingston and even Ottawa were part of this story!

As the title implies, the book examines the various levels and the spectrum of appropriate meting out of Punishment. Sometimes that is self-punishment, sometimes it is by one other person or possibly many other people. Often the justification for punishment is in the eye of the beholder, as we see throughout the story, and often that justification is judged by others around us.

Although I would not rate this as a 'stellar' read, it was certainly thought-provoking, which I always appreciate.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a breezy page-turner in the vein of Gillian Flynn, with betrayals and twists aplenty in the third act. There's a lot to like here, but it was a bit uneven for me.

MacIntyre's writing is compelling, and I quite liked his non-linear style, as well as his snappy dialogue. Characters generally felt real and easy-to-relate-to. The overall thrust of the mystery, however, got very dull at times, and I felt like the first half of the book was entirely too long. The setting was hum-drum, and some of the "character-building" was actually just confusing and distracting from the twists and turns that I imagine he wants you to focus on.

Overall, a pretty fun read, and the third act ramps up in a way that kept me engaged, but I barely hung in through the first half of the book to get there. A mixed bag, for sure.

[Amy Roebuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always wonder, when the esteemed Mr. MacIntyre publishes a new book, if he can possibly meet the standards he set for himself in his last work. He has never, ever disappointed.
He has been such an aware and intelligent observer of the human condition, both in his career in journalism and in his fiction--and in his life, I am sure-- that we feel certain the events and reactions he tells of have just happened TO HIM (or to a close loved one).
His hand as an author is so superb, that one book may contain (as this one does): a portrait of small town life; a depiction of the penal system; an indictment of 'cops gone bad'; and what are (probably/maybe/perhaps?) personal takes on 9-11, Colin Powell, life with a canine, the end of a relationship and much more, all woven so skillfully that the tapestry is beautiful and rich and without flaws.
Personal note: Mr. MacIntyre is even more compelling in person (author visit) as he is in investigative reporting and in his fiction...and that's saying quite a lot.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first book by L. MacIntyre. I would give it a 3.5. I usually don’t read crime / murder mystery novels but this novel was suggested reading from a friend. The book was somewhat slow and stale at the beginning but did pick up at the story progressed. Part of the narrative takes a peak at the penal system in Ontario from both the inmate and the staff working within the system and the other part of the novel takes place in a small NS community following the release of an inmate and prison guard back into their home community. I did find the character development of the antagonist somewhat stereotypical but the overall plot of the novel reflecting on justice and vengeance was quite nicely developed and displayed some intriguing character developments.

[Pam Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this was like watching a fire grow slowly from just a spark to glowing embers to licks of flame to a full-throated blaze.
The characters had depth; believable flaws and strengths and were played beautifully one against (and with) each other. The remoteness of the landscape/village, the cold of the winters, the loneliness of the houses provided an excellent foundation on which the plot unfolds.
But it was the constant undercurrent of something not right, something that was going wrong and just when I thought I had it figured out, it skidded in another direction until, when all became clear, I was amazed at smoothly, deftly the pieces fell together.
Well done!