This engaging page-turner kept me surprised and entertained during a flight delay – what better recommendation is there? Seriously, whether or not you’re a mystery fan, Safe As Houses is a great read anywhere. It has so many pleasing components — Liz, a bookish dog-walker turned sleuth when her hound sniffs out a dead body in one of Toronto’s most genteel parks; Sammy, her fractious teenaged kid who can’t cope with her boring mom; Maxime, an elegant French Classics professor and Roman-antiquity quote-dropper. And more. There’s a subplot; Liz’s marriage to Adam is over, and he lives upstairs with his girlfriend in the building that houses her bookstore. He wants out of his investment, provoking enough uncertainty in Liz’s life without a dead body showing up on her morning walk.

The parallel storytelling is very well done and builds suspense. At the outset, we’re introduced to an abused child, a box of matches, an act of arson. His story (noted by a matchbox icon) is interspersed with the numbered chapters of Liz’s narrative, as we gradually realize who the child is and why it matters. In the end, the mystery gets solved, but there’s no tidy ending; it feels both as satisfying and as shadowy as life often feels. In its gentle way, the story keeps reminding us that safety is never certain and life keeps surprising us, even on innocent dog-walks. You’ll enjoy this book.

– Carole Giangrande

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/287052.Susan_Glickman/blog

“It’s great to read a book set in Toronto and Susan Glickman, poet, editor, critic and creative writing professor, does it proud in this debut mystery set in the lovely hidden enclave of Wychwood Park. The story begins with bookstore owner Liz Ryerson walking her dog in the park. Dog smells something, goes to hunt, scratches up a body. Suddenly, we are in whodunit land, with a totally familiar setting which Glickman sketches like a master. Reading along, I was reminded often of the late great Eric Wright’s wonderful cop novels and Jack Batten’s PI stories, both located in Toronto neighbourhoods with people anyone might recognize as types. All that said, the mystery is a good one, with a nice puzzle and a deft, smart woman to sort out the clues. It’s short and fun and well-written and perfect for a rainy afternoon at home. Let’s hope Liz Ryerson returns soon.”

• Margaret Cannon, The Globe & Mail, Saturday November 14, 2015

click on the link:

data.axmag.com

https://deborahserravalle.wordpress.com/tag/susan-glickman/

BOOK REVIEW: SAFE AS HOUSES BY SUSAN GLICKMAN

Safe As Houses, by Susan Glickman

What is it about bookshops and murder? Glickman’s new novel is a cozy murder mystery about how lives are transformed after the discovery of a body in Toronto’s tony Wychwood Park neighbourhood.

But one of the most delicious parts of the book is the setting: a bookshop owned by Glickman’s protagonist, Liz Ryerson, near Bathurst and St. Clair in downtown Toronto. The shop is called “Outside of a Dog,” from the quote by Harpo Marx (“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend“) and also because there is indeed a dog (with whom Liz is out walking when she stumbles across the corpse). And the reader is able to vicariously experience the joy Liz takes in working in her shop. She spends time thoughtfully curating her collection and assembling themed tables, and reading the lists of books within the text was so much fun and an absolute bookish pleasure.

Kerry Clare, http://49thshelf.com/Blog/2015/10/01/Books-About-Bookshops

Book launch

Wednesday September 9th, 7-9 pm

at TYPE BOOKS, 883 Queen Street West, Toronto

If you wish to inquire about an editing job, please go to that page first.

Today’s Music

Susan Glickman’s book, The Smooth Yarrow, shows a chilling awareness of mortality through the accumulation of injuries like broken bones and the loss of teeth. Not old yet, she is close enough to celebrate elderly women “who use their best china every day / and jump the queue at the grocery store because they have so little in their baskets / and no time to waste.” Even her garden poems mix exquisite celebrations of new life with knowledge of the transience of beauty. The first section of her work is called “Homeopathic Principles.” Whatever the truth of homeopathy as a medical practice might be, the philosophy of treating an illness with drugs that induce its symptoms is – suggestive. A poem can build up our resistance by administering mild doses of the very toxins that we suffer from in living: sickness, age, grief. The loss of a loved one is the greatest toxin of all, and Glickman’s elegy  for her father, “Breath,” offers not consolation but a powerful recreation of his passing, with the breath of the dying man as the focal point for a family unsure how to react. Emily Dickinson’s great poem, “IheardaFlybuzz–whenI died” comes to mind, but the confusion in Glickman’s poem is in the watchers, not the person dying. “We hesitated, no longer sure what to pray for.” Uncertainty is the paradoxical remedy here, evidence of how deeply the family cares. The poem that deals explicitly with homeopathy as a metaphor is “Homeopathic Remedies for Scar Tissue.” Glickman knows that life is a series of scarring experiences. One remedy is to smear sandalwood paste on the injury. It will attract bees, from which we may learn how to dance in the sun and how to fight back, though a bee’s self-defence is fatal. But life is fatal, after all. In one of her excellent garden poems she celebrates the compacted hearts of rosehips (analogues for the mature poet), and calls them “Late bloomers: late / as in late Brahms. Not tardy / but ripe.” The analogy with the great autumnal works of Brahms is a good one and also fits Glickman’s own wise and elegant work.