If Looks Could Kill
by Michael Blair

The gist of Montrealer Michael Blair's quirky debut novel, If Looks Could Kill , is that "value systems are curious things"--a polite understatement considering the harshness and pace of this tongue-in-cheek mystery.

Thomas "Tommy" McCall, a dullard freelance photographer, is a poster boy for the dysfunctional and the lead stooge in a parade of double-crosses and love losses. He's a poser with a Land Rover, a Porsche, and a sinking houseboat on Vancouver 's Granville Island .

His life is a superficial shambles, offering--amongst much pretence--"twinges of Oedipal guilt" while he leers at his former runway-model mom, "dressed as if she still weighed a hundred and ten pounds, in close fitting garments that emphasized her plumpness and severely strained the containment limits of Lycra."

His biggest problem, though, is one Carla Bergman, a cold-hearted, scurrilous vixen who brought him to his knees two years ago and now--after a chance meeting at the airport--is likely his utter ruination this time around.

He knows now that she can't ever be trusted, but the Jezebel still owns him, and she knows it: "Tommy, if I put my mind to it, I could make you believe that the sky was falling."

So it's no surprise that he's suckered again when she turns up at his door, desperate for a hideout after finally jacking up the wrong guy, a menacing thug who rightly reckons Tommy is chump enough to try bailing Carla out.

Tommy feels that ominous heat, and it's fun to watch him whine, wiggle, and squirm.

Looks , which was a nominee for the inaugural Chapters/Robertson Davies Prize for unpublished Canadian novelists, isn't a classic mind-bender that causes deep shivers or loathing, but it will amuse and confound, holding your interest with each turn of the page.

- sigcino moyo

original publication: Amazon.ca