Cherry Beach by Don Gillmor
Reviewed by Paul Carlucci
Toronto the Ugly
It’s tempting to say that Don Gillmor’s Cherry Beach is oddly topical. A literary crime thriller depicting Toronto as corruption-addled real estate playground for the rich and criminally unaccountable, it arrives as rental prices have declined after years of mind-blowing highs and as members of the city’s police department have been charged in a scandal so disturbing the Ontario government announced a probe into every other department in the province. And yet, real estate is always news in Toronto, and the city’s government and its agencies are no stranger to shocking scandals, making the book not so much oddly topical as sharply reflective.
“Gillmor presents a twisty, conspiranoic plot brimming with references you don’t have to live in Toronto to recognize.”
Jamieson Abel is investigating the murders of two girls—Angela Blair and Dashika Moore—stabbed to death in a St. James Town high-rise. Along with his partner, Davis, he’s a pariah on the force, her because she’s Black and him because he once beat a bully cop senseless during a department hockey game. The investigation quickly focuses on Delroy Staples, Dashika’s shady boyfriend who just happens to be impossible to find, even as the cops draw lawsuits for roughing up every other young Black men they come across. Things get more complicated when a White supremacist tries to rob Abel at knifepoint outside the tower, only to summon a high-powered Black attorney who represents him without obvious distaste. And then there’s another murder, a trans escort named Intrepid, strangled to death with a fancy tie.
Graffiti murals with subverted religious iconography, a crack-smoking mayor who crashes his car while driving drunk, a boardroom full of high-powered suits wearing mulberry ties, a series of iffy real estate deals, and a major crimes unit full of brutish investigators—Gillmor presents a twisty, conspiranoic plot brimming with references you don’t have to live in Toronto to recognize.
The author is a celebrated and award-winning journalist, novelist, and children’s book writer, and Cherry Beach has many of the fine literary qualities his fans will expect. In particular, Abel is a multi-faceted protagonist, a loner who longs for romantic company, his heart broken in his youth. Also when he was young, his father died in ambiguous circumstances, and his mom later succumbed to cancer. He got a hockey scholarship to study English and history in the States, then came back to Canada to go to law school, but he dropped out to become a cop. In his off hours, he’s an aspiring wine connoisseur who drinks alone in his condo while cooking gourmet meals with so much realism the scenes could double as recipes. And if he’s restless at night, he roams the city, ruminating on its history dating all the way back to the Family Compact in the nineteenth century.
It’s not that someone like Abel couldn’t exist—of course he could; we contain multitudes. Nevertheless, he sometimes feels a little too constructed, many of his characteristics carefully developed so the first-person narrative can give credible rise to the book’s magnificent descriptions of neighbourhoods and their histories, not just in Toronto but even in Kingston, Jamaica, where Abel is sent to find Staples, or so he’s told. A third-person approach might’ve worked a little better, a protagonist with more noirish flaws, and the pacing could’ve done with fewer cooking scenes as the plot escalates to its gritty climax.
But the balance of literary and genre elements is always a tricky one, with different writers and readers having different preferences and sensibilities. Cherry Beach is a largely captivating novel, the sentences by turns clipped and spare or expansive and stunning. And befitting of an author who’s spent so much time in journalism, Gillmor doesn’t pull any punches. The world he gives is an ugly one, much like our own.
About the Author
Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of four novels, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata, a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History, and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, The Walrus, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.
About the Reviewer
Paul Carlucci is the author of one novel, The Voyageur, and three story collections, The High-Rise in Fort Fierce, A Plea for Constant Motion, and The Secret Life of Fission. He won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and has been a finalist for two Ottawa Book Awards and two ReLit Awards. He’s a freelance editor, working with academics and research professionals, hybrid and traditional presses, and aspiring authors.
Book Details
Publisher : Biblioasis
Publication date : April 14 2026
Language : English
Print length : 272 pages
ISBN-10 : 1771966904
ISBN-13 : 978-1771966900