The Geoffry Chadwick Series by Edward O. Phillips

Sunday's Child Buried on Sunday Sunday's Best Working on Sunday

Rating: **** Reviewer: Meg Note: It is best to read these in order, but not absolutely necessary. Purchase Information: All of the above are available on line from The Double Hook Bookstore in Montreal. Amazon does not carry Working on Sunday. The Double Hook Bookstore ships world wide and they are very friendly folks.

There is no match for this series when it comes to an amateur sleuth who is urbane, witty, and ages with such grace as does Geoffry (no "e") Chadwick, a corporate lawyer who is a partner in a respectable, conservative law firm in the heart of Montreal. Geoffry is a fascinating character who juggles career, an odd and sometimes difficult assortment of friends and family, with a gay lifestyle which, although never truly closeted, is maintained quietly and without social fanfare. Not that his love life lacks intensity, but it is his business only.... always. Something about Geoffry, his natural dignity perhaps,prevents people from asking too many questions. Part of what makes Geoffry so interesting is his ability to look back over an eventful life and to adjust to each phase with self-knowledge and a certain objectivity. Aging is a issue from the first book which begins when Geoffry is in his late forties. At the end of Working on Sunday he is 65 and has survived all the rites of passage from giving up the exuberance of youth and the cruising lifestyle to a more settled ability to see advantages to living alone and to the exercise of restraint when necessary. He moves from transitory relationships to friendships, even in the end to one that is, for him, unconventional. Not only does he deal with his own aging, but he has to cope with his mother's move over the course of the four books from an apartment in which she has lived for most of her adult life to an adult care center as she grows too frail to live alone. In order to ease this transition, Geoffry has to deal with his sister from Toronto. the conventional, powerful, matriarchal Mildred whose attempts to force the family to march to her music, are thwarted deftly by Geoffry time and again. Geoffry is the uncle that Mildred's children turn to when they begin to step out on their own and he serves as mentor and confidant each time, remembering his own youth and treating each of his nieces and nephew as unique. The aging and family issues are integral parts of the books and with each book the reader eagerly anticipates the inevitable conflict between Geoffry and Mildred . But, along with these family squabbles there is an underlying mystery. In the first book Geoffry accidentally kills a nasty young hustler who he brings home one lonely New Year's Eve. Most mysteries would have him call the police, after which he would have to save himself from becoming a murder suspect, by reluctantly investigating the past life of the young man to prove that he was only acting in self-defense. But Phillips uses a twist. Instead of dialing 911, Geoffry weighs the options and decides that the only reasonable one is to get rid of the problem body permanently. How he does this without alerting well meaning friends and family, is the central activity of the e book. As the plot moves forward, he copes with enough contingencies to prove Murphy's law over many times. Best laid body removal plans can really go wildly astray. This murky upwelling of events in the otherwise quiet, ecologically balanced pond of his life, keep things very suspenseful. The mysteries continue to vary from the standard genre line book by book. Geoffry's ability to extricate himself from family, friends, and criminals' entanglements is uncanny. However much of what makes these books so interesting and delightful is Geoffry's skills at repartee, the extended metaphor and the analysis of human behavior, his own included. Only examples can really illustrate this. At the beginning of Working on Sunday, Geoffry describes his encounters with two doctors: Last year to my dismay my former doctor retired. For years he had poked and prodded my ageing body, with a two-pack-a-day cigarette in his mouth or smouldering in a nearby ashtray. He also drank Scotch, rather a lot. His creased and furrowed face was a relief map of mornings after. Women found him irresistible. He knew about my sexual orientation and shrugged it off as Chaqu`un a son gout. Once a year, after my late-afternoon annual checkup, we would go out for dinner and tie one on. In spite of his human frailty, more likely because of it, he was a true healer. His retirement due to failing health was yet another reminder of my own mortality. I was bequeathed, like an antique chest, to his junior partner, whose character had been annealed in the crucible of the sixties. He is a no-nonsense, nuts-and-berries M.D. He smokes not, neither does he drink. And it must follow, as the night the day, that he is a fanatic about exercise. Our first meeting was not an unqualified success. He asked me about my sex life. Far too old to be coy, I told him. He asked me sternly if I practiced safe sex. I told him I practiced the safest sex of all, total abstinence. (I did not feel it necessary to tell him about my earlier years when I practiced enough unsafe sex for thirteen lifetimes.) he asked me whether I smoked. I was able to answer no, leaving out the footnote that had I liked cigarettes I would bloody well smoke and bugger the consequences. Then he came to the big one: did I drink? Yes, I did. How would I describe my drinking? "Social drinker," I replied. "One might even say a heavy social drinker." "More than four ounces a day?" "Much more. I t takes me four ounces to get out of the chair and get dinner started." Along with the family, the aging, the mystery, and the wit are a gang of friends, some of whom crop up book to book. Lawrence Townsend II, Geoffry's friend of 50 years is ever present and the repartee between the two men is snappy and hilarious. In this scene, Larry takes the elevator up to Geoffry's apartment just before Christmas. ...he walked quickly down the hall. "Dr. Chadwick, I presume?" "Nightingale's the name--Florence. Here let me hang up your coat." He looked around. "But, you haven't decked the halls with boughs of holly. There's not even a sprig of mistletoe so you can kiss my bee-stung lips." "I'm saving up for my big Easter display: a giant chocolate bunny surrounded by pots of Easter lilies, live baby chicks in the bathtub, an Easter egg hunt at the local library, and much, much more. What will you drink? A mart?" "Do you happen to have a beer?" "A beer?" "You heard me the first time. And it will be my first today. I'm having my period." "Girls your age don't have periods. They have osteoporosis. I'll pour for the first hour." "Stay as sweet as you are!" he called after me as I went into the kitchen. To sum up, Phillips imbues his series with clever dialog, unusual mystery twists, family complications, fascinating characters and life issues, especially aging. These are solid books with lots to think about long after they are over. Order all four and read them one right after the other. I wish I liked Scotch. If you do, then settle down with any one of these volumes in front of the fire with some Black Label, Geoffry's favorite and have a great read.