Synopsis/blurb ...

Behind the scenes, nothing is what it seems.

Gord Stewart, 40 years old, single, moved back into his sub­urban childhood home to care for his widowed father. But his father no longer needs care and Gord is stuck in limbo. He’s been working in the movie business as a location scout for years, and when there isn’t much filming, as a private eye for a security company run by ex-cops, OBC. When a fellow crew member asks him to find her missing uncle, Gord reluctantly takes the job. The police say the uncle walked into some dense woods in Northern Ontario and shot himself, but the man’s wife thinks he’s still alive.

With the help of his movie business and OBC connections, Gord finds a little evidence that the uncle may be alive. Now Gord has two problems: what to do when he finds a man who doesn’t want to be found, and admitting that he’s getting invested in this job. For the first time in his life, Gord Stewart is going to have to leave the sidelines and get into the game. Even if it might get him killed.
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My take....

Every City etc is my first John McFetridge book for a few years. Black Rock was read back in 2014, Swap in 2011. Having enjoyed both, in particular Black Rock as much as I did, I can't actually believe it's only the third book I've read by him in the past ten years.

In Every City we have main character, Gord Stewart reluctantly looking into a missing person case for a work colleague. Stewart works as a location scout in films, with a fall back investigative gig with a security firm, OBC.

Logic and a cursory police investigation seem to indicate his client's missing uncle abandoned his car and strode off into the woods to kill himself. McFetridge seems to use to book as a klaxon call for a discussion on the rise of male suicide. (If not a full-on discussion, male suicide and mental health particularly in the demographic of middle-aged men is at least flagged as a subject worthy of some attention.)

Stewart shows his capabilities as an investigator, following a trail of breadcrumbs around several towns and cities and while not actually finding his quarry does enough to disavow the notion that the uncle took his own life. His man is out there somewhere.

On set, Gord starts a fledgling romance with an actor, Esther. There's an interesting dynamic between Gord and his widowed father that Esther eases into. Gord has moved back home, ostensibly to look after his father, a man who seems pretty capable on his own. Perhaps it's a way of combatting his own loneliness. His father himself might be back in the dating game. The home situation adds some humour to the book.

About halfway through the book we break off on a tangent with a secondary situation concerning Gord's sometime employer and their current hot news case. OBC is using its considerable powers to try and suppress, intimidate or discredit potential witnesses in a up-coming high profile rape case against one of its clients. Danger alert - Stewart and his actor girlfriend find themselves in the crosshairs of a formidable opponent.

Situation B gets resolved and we then switch back to missing person mode. Stewart, the client and the missing man's wife and the reader get answers as to what happened and most of the why.

I'm kind of conflicted about the book if I'm honest. I liked the characters, the situation, the story, the investigation, the bits in and around the film world, the understanding and sympathy extended to a man who behaves from the outside in an inexplicable, incomprehensible way. It felt personal. I can see how the authorities under pressure of case load and resource issues might go for the easy outcome. Not saying it's right, but I can understand it.


The other bit of book with the separate situation that Gord found himself in the middle of, seemed at odds to the rest of the tale. It was almost as if it had been inserted as some filler to flesh out the page count. It added some tension and danger and some action to an otherwise enjoyable book, but one bereft of any real excitement. Some food for thought though.

Overall 3 from 5 - It's not my favourite book from the author.

Read - August, 2021
Published - 2021
Page count - 344
Source - Net Galley
Format - Kindle

http://col2910.blogspot.com/2021/08/john-mcfetridge-every-city-is-every.html

Canadian author John McFetridge begins this new series with Every City is Every Other City. Gordon Stewart is a forty-year-old man who scouts for film locations and has a Private Investigator’s licence. He is asked to assist his boss’s aunt who does not believe her husband suicided despite the police determining it so. The story begins with a gentle crime story that is more about the characters and unfolding investigation with its various interconnections. If you enjoy low key character driven crime then this three-star read rating is for you. With thanks to NetGalley and the author for a preview copy for review purposes. All opinions expressed herein are freely given and totally my own.

Gordon Stewart scouts locations for movies. He also happens to be a licensed private investigator. While working a movie, sort of-we never actually see him work but hear a lot about it, he is asked by a coworker to help her find her uncle. He left his truck on a backroad and went into the woods. He never came out. The police are convinced he killed himself and eventually a hunter will find his body. His wife is not convinced.

There is a lot in this book about the high suicide rate in working class white men. In order to make up for it, there is a lot of talk about the #metoo movement and a case of a rich man trying to destroy the women who accused him of rape. This seems like a secondary plot but soon becomes the main plot. Both cases he worked on were written and wrapped up pretty well.

I liked Gordon. Most of the time. I wasn't a huge fan of Ethel. She seems like the kind who is fun at first but exhausting after a while. I wish I'd had more of Gordon's dad. He seemed fun. There were a lot of small characters brought into the story that may or may not pop up again. It will be fun to see which ones come back for the second installment.

I liked the cases and how Gordon went about solving them. This being the first book in the series you can see how each could come back in future stories. There is a lot of opportunity for continuity here. I like that, too.

I didn't like the constant comparison of what was happening to what a movie would do. We get it. You work in movies. Does everyone who works in movies spend their entire life interrupting people to tell them what they would say if they were in a movie? Move on. I kept having Abed from Community in my head, "I like it, it makes every ten minutes feel like the new scene of a TV show, of course the illusion only last until someone says something they would never say on TV, like how much their life is like TV, there it's gone."

If they can tone down the "Hey, everyone! Did you know we work in movies? They have taken over my entire life and I am just a shallow shadow of a character!" thing, I think the books could be a really great series. Maybe it is because I grew up in southern California and live in a rural mountain place that gets invaded for filming pretty often, but I am not interested in seeing more about actors, directors, producers, set dressers, or even location scouts.

More detective work. Less movie talk!

Gordon Stewart does investigations as a sideline of his main business finding movie locations. This time he's looking for Kevin Mercer, whose wife doesn't believe he just went off into the woods and killed himself. It's not a spoiler that that might not be the case but what really happened and why? He's also doing some jobs for OBC, including surveilling a woman. Stewart has some strong opinions. He's also got a sort of sidekick in Ethel. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. It's an interesting and different take on the PI novel.

McFetridge really can write. I was drawn into this book immediately, and the combination of private eye and movie location scout was interesting.

I really couldn't put this down... kept reading eagerly to find out what was going to happen both with the case and the hero's private life.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author.
I loved the geographic location and the characters were entertaining.
This was all around a good read.
I voluntarily reviewed an advance reader copy of this book.

I would like to thank Netgalley and ECW Press for an advance copy of Every City is every other City, the first novel to feature Toronto based location scout and occasional PI Gordon Stewart.

Gord is asked by his boss, Lana, to find her her missing uncle Kevin Mercer. The police think he committed suicide, his wife Barb doesn’t believe it.

I enjoyed Every City is every other City, which is a quirky tale of a hunt for a missing man. Gord’s investigation seems haphazard and a little lackadaisical, but this is maybe because it is told from his point of view and I underestimated his tenacity and smarts. It is, after all, not that easy to find someone who doesn’t want to be found. I got really invested in the hunt for Kevin Mercer and found that part of the novel compelling.

There is a subplot to the novel where Gord does some investigative work for his PI bosses. I didn’t find it particularly interesting as it’s cynical and nasty. Unfortunately it would seem to contain the hard reality that money can buy a lot of rule bending, influence and a lack of ethics.

There is a fair amount of pontificating in the novel about various subjects. I’m sure many readers will find the points raised food for thought, but I don’t have the energy to engage or get indignant, so it passed me by.

I like Gord Stewart who is a nice guy trying to get by in a complex world. He has his head screwed on and an ability to see the ramifications of certain actions.

Every City is every other City is a solid read.

John McFetridge’s new mystery #EveryCityIsEveryOtherCity proves one thing very clearly - every city IS every other city. The title stems from lead character Gordon Stewart’s main occupation, location scout for motion pictures. From his home in Toronto, where he takes care of his sick father, Stewart searches out the perfect city to be transformed into wherever the script calls for. This makes him ideal for his auxiliary career- private investigator, predominantly small time. When a coworker asks him to help her aunt by getting to the root of her uncle’s suspicious disappearance, Stewart hesitantly agrees. What insures is a little more than he bargained for as it starts to become apparent that the missing uncle may not have shot himself deep in the Northern Canadian woods, but wandered off to Western Canada to live a life of anonymity. Once it becomes clear that there’s more hear than meets the eye we discover that whether you’re hunting film locations or the people that inhabit them, there’s a lot of truth in the old saying : no matter where you go you’ve never left.

It has been a long time since I've read John McFetridge. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere knocked my socks off. I was expecting something a little gritty, a little warped, a lot Canadian. I wasn't expecting something so funny.

This story involves a mild-mannered location scout for films who has a side gig as a private investigator. (In addition to writing crime novels, the author writes film and radio plays; he knows this beat.) One of his film connections asks him to look into a missing person case. A man left his middle-to-working class home in a suburb and drove to the woods where he took his gun and vanished. The police assume he committed suicide, though it may take a while for his body to turn up. His "widow" is furious and wants him tracked down because he had no business leaving her high and dry like that. And while our hero doesn't think he'll turn anything up, he takes it on pro bono (so long as some film project can pay his expenses. Sure, he's in Sudbury to scout locations.) Then he comes across something odd in the man's credit card records. And a body turns up, but not in the woods.

At the same time, a ethics-challenged PI agency run by ex=cops wants him to take on emergency jobs. They have a major investigation on their hands, looking for dirt on the women who have accused a bigwig of sexual assault. It's icky work, but to find his missing person, he needs the favors only these cop-connected PIs can provide. Though he's only pitching in when an emergency arises, this investigation becomes serious and kind of turns the missing persons case into a MacGuffin.

The best part is Ethel, a woman who gets a small speaking part in a film he's been working on, then gets a larger speaking part in the novel, helping him with his case. This is a great character, a woman comic who hasn't made it big, but wins over everyone with her impressions and her wit. She's working on a one-woman show about how the women sidekicks of famous comic couples were actually the star of the duos, even if they were cast as dim bulbs. Think Gracie Allen, think Edith Bunker. Or think Ethel - who steals every scene she's in.