Blood Ties - Barbara Fradkin

Blood Ties is the fourth in a series of what author Barbara Fradkin calls Cedric O’Toole Mysteries. It is my first exposure to Mr. O’Toole and his friends, and I’m still trying to figure out what I really think of the guy – and his friends.  Cedric (or Rick, as he prefers to be called) is so laid back about life that he doesn’t get very excited when a man shows up at his door claiming to be the half-brother Rick never knew existed.  Well, I figured, maybe this is just the mark of an overly cautious man.  But it turns out that even after Rick has decided to help Steve answer some key questions about the father they supposedly share, he is still not willing to approach the very people most likely actually to have the answers they are seeking. 

Then, just when I was ready to write Rick off as some kind of oblivious weirdo, I decided that he was probably just afraid of what he might learn about his family by asking the wrong questions of the wrong people. Steve, though, was not playing that game.  And that got Steve – and Rick - in a whole lot of trouble.  The book’s cover describes Cedric O’Toole as a “reluctant sleuth and unlikely hero,” but that description does not much hint at what Rick is capable of when a hero is required and he is the only one around even remotely fit for the role.  He can be a hero when he has to be one, Rick just doesn’t really want that job. 

Author Barbara Fradkin

Barbara Fradkin, who is also a practicing child psychologist in Ottawa, has set Blood Ties in a relatively remote Canadian village, and she uses that closed setting to emphasize how easy it is for a relatively small circle of adults to keep a life-changing secret from someone who was not even born yet when the event in question occurred.  Fradkin gives her readers plenty of action and plenty to think about in this novella of only 148 pages – maybe not enough to get me to look for the previous three books in the series, but definitely enough to get me to check out the other two series she is writing.  I would call Blood Ties a “cozy mystery,” because it shares most of the key characteristics that I use to define that mystery sub-genre: mild language, behind-the-scene sex and violence, and a community in which everyone seems to know everyone else. If cozies are your thing, this one might be just the thing for you.

Orca Book Publishers provided an Advance Reading Copy of Blood Ties for review purposes.

(Book number 3,415)