Meurtre à Westmount

Russell Teed #1

by David Montrose

MONTRÉAL, FIN DES ANNÉES 1940. Russell Teed est enquêteur privé à l’emploi de compagnies, habituellement pour tirer au clair des affaires de fraude. Une vieille connaissance de son Westmount natal lui confie une enquête qui le change de son ordinaire: Martha Scaley veut connaître le véritable état matrimonial de son gendre, John Sark. Une lettre anonyme lui fait soupçonner qu’il était déjà marié avant de convoler en justes noces avec sa fille Inez. Et chez les Scaley, on est riche et respectable, et on ne fait pas dans la bigamie.
L’affaire s’annonce d’autant plus brumeuse que Sark est introuvable depuis près d’une semaine; elle le devient davantage quand Teed découvre le disparu refroidi devant son frigo. En voulant aller au bout de cette histoire, Teed fait la connaissance de toute une galerie de personnages interlopes, pour la plupart avides de discrétion et chatouilleux de la gâchette. La mort de Sark profite bel et bien à quelqu’un, mais à qui?
Parce qu’il en a beaucoup vu et bavé pendant la guerre, en Europe, Teed n’est pas du genre à se laisser intimider par quiconque, et c’est heureux pour lui. Il a mis le pied dans un milieu sans pitié, et il a la ferme intention d’être aussi impitoyable que ses adversaires. Son regard désabusé sur la vie, son humour grinçant, sa féroce résistance aux femmes fatales et ses réflexes de félin seront ses meilleurs alliés.
Arpentez le Montréal bouillonnant de l’après-guerre au côté de Russell Teed, dans une savoureuse traduction de Sophie Cardinal-Corriveau. Si vous avez aimé Chandler, Chase ou Jim Thompson, Meurtre à Westmount vous comblera.

Genres: Mystery, School, Crime

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 15, 2010

Reviews

[Mike Edwardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times entertaining and suspenseful, but seemingly too many details arbitrarily piled into the solution. I needed to clear my head when all was said and done.

[Lisa Kucharski · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very slow mystery where the detective spends a lot of time wandering around asking the same questions until people finally tell the truth. Also the physical violence feels forced to me. While I didn't mind the style of the writing, I found the characters a bit dull, and the detective was a bit dull too.

The nice thing is that the story wasn't so thick with slang that you needed a thug slang dictionary. The fact that it was located in Montreal was interesting, and the fact of how people slipped into the US or ran out of the US was interesting.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh this was such a delicious read. A sweet hard boiled detective novel written in and takes place in 50s Montreal.
The author’s turn of phrase fills me with such joy, like:

‘I raised the rye decanter and drank from it like a kid from coke. All right, like a baby from a bottle’

And so many other gems.

The mystery was great; good twists for me. Really enjoyed it. Where’s the tv series?

[Zack Mailhot · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like I’ve been reading this book since the beginning of the semester and I’ve finally ended the task of finishing this book😂 The story isn’t bad or and the book is super short but it’s far from being the best of the books I’ve red for my Detective fiction class (2.5 stars)

[Susie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vraiment bon, genre noir. J'ai bien aimé le langage coloré de l'époque!

[Daphne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't buy the double...

[Alison C · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Crime on Cote des Neiges, by David Montrose, was originally published in 1951, and was reissued in 2010 by Vehicule Press in Montreal. Squarely in the vein of noir, it tells the story of Russell Teed, an anglo private investigator living in Montreal and primarily making a living doing high-flying work for mega-corporations. But when the rich Westmount mother of a childhood friend asks Teed to find out what has happened to her daughter's husband, who has not been seen for five days, he is willing to take on a different kind of detective work. It doesn't take long for him to realize that the man is dead, and from there on in the bodies just start piling up, one after another. Who is behind the murders? Could it be one of the three women apparently linked to the dead man? Or some of his business partners who are tired of his high-handed ways? Or perhaps the drug ring that has more uses for a remote cabin than one might think.... Quite dark and rather odd, this book presents Montreal in a very different light to the way the city is now (I live in Montreal, so I can say that with confidence). For one thing, Montreal in the novel appears to be almost entirely Anglophone, with the only French character being Sergeant Framboise ("raspberry"), who is hyper-alert, yet plodding and slow, and whose English is portrayed as very heavily accented and grammar-free. For another, the street names are almost all different now; most have been renamed using French terms or people, whereas in Montrose's day, many street names were English. For example, what is now Rene Levesque Blvd. was once Dorchester Street, and our hero spends a lot of time traveling on that Anglophone road. The women in the book are all scheming and slinky; the men are happy to use their fists, knives and guns any time at all. Oh, and our hero starts drinking (usually beer, sometimes rye or whiskey) from the moment he rolls out of bed, and carries on until he finds said bed once again. Montrose apparently wrote two other books featuring Teed, Murder Over Dorval (1952) and The Body on Mount Royal (1953), and I hope Vehicule Press reissues those two as well. Definitely not for people with tender sensibilities concerning the violence, sexism and racism that was part of the social fabric of the time, but recommended if you're a fan of 1950s pulp!

[Eugène L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone who really loves Montréal I was always curious about the city’s history. Gabrielle Roy’s “Bonheur d'occasion” describes the French Canadian Montréal of 1939, and Mordecai Richler’s books give an idea on Jewish Montreal of 1940s-1950s, but the old-days English Montreal remained a mystery for me. So I hoped that David Montrose would fill in this gap.

Well, “The Crime on Cote des Neiges” is no historic book, but it gives some idea about Montreal life in the late 1940s – early 1950s. We learn for example that people had refrigerators, that 2 bottles of beer cost a dollar, and that it was quite normal to have a couple of “rye” before driving. It was interesting to see names of familiar streets in the downtown.

On every possible occasion, the narrator tries to show how cool he is, and how all the other characters are stupid, awkward, miserable or insignificant. Except several beautiful girls who often try to seduce Teed by taking their clothes off (which is the waste of time for them as Teed is too cool to respond to their sex-appeal).

As for the story itself, it’s neither bad, nor boring. Good enough

[Kenneth · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding Canadian specimen of the mid-20th century hardboiled murder mystery. Private eye Russell Teed finds himself investigating the murder of the owner of Montreal nightclubs and gambling joints who back in the 1920's had been a bootlegger smuggling booze into the USA during the Prohibition era. Involved are the dead man's sometime wives and various accomplices, and a drug seller dealing in heroin. Lots of turns and twists in this well-plotted search for whodunit.

[Susanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting experience of a genre that I've never read before. Nice settings in Montreal in the early 50's. Very well written, but implausible.