Don Gillmor's ​Cherry Beach

Reviewed by Adam McPhee

(Biblioasis, 2026)

​One common problem with crime fiction is what to do about the detective’s domestic life.
 
Every once in a while our protagonist has to hit a dead end or otherwise take a night off from solving the case, and there needs to be something going on outside of the detective's work life to make it feel like well-rounded storytelling. In truth, no one ever really cares for this part, and we mostly just want to get back to the action, but if the author messes it up then either the protagonist feels too much like an automaton, or the pacing of the story feels off. The most common solution when the detective is a cop is to make him or her a functional alcoholic, either divorced or on the brink thereof. Cops seem like they have a pretty high divorce rate, so it usually seems plausible, plus it makes them seem dogged— I care too damn much about solving the case to go to my kid’s shitty piano recital or whatever— and it allows for plot flexibility: the detective is free to solve the crime if the author wants, or the nagging ex can throw a wrench in the gears if an obstacle is desired. But this approach has been done to death. I mean, it was old when Jimmy McNulty was doing it, and that’s twenty years ago now.
 
Don Gillmor neatly sidesteps this problem in his new novel Cherry Beach by having his detective live alone—no ex, no real prospects—but writing him as a great cook (or at least a better cook than I am). Every so often Detective Abel leaves work to head home and spend some time in the kitchen:

​I turned the oven to 400°F and took out broccolini, grape tomatoes, and a red onion, sliced the onion, cut the grape tomatoes in half, placed them in a bowl and drizzled olive oil and lemon, then added cumin and hot pepper flakes and tossed. I laid it all out on a cookie sheet, then added a slab of feta cheese on top. I mixed maple syrup and soy sauce and brushed it onto a fillet of salmon. I put the vegetables in the oven, then added the salmon on a separate sheet five minutes later. When everything was close to done, I turned the oven to broil and brushed the salmon again, and put it back, the salmon skin side up so it would get crispy and the fat would percolate down into the flesh. The skin was a stellar source of omega-3 fatty acids, which were good for something I couldn’t recall. When it was done I took it all out, poured a large glass of a Cotes du Rhone that had been recommended in a newspaper column titled “French overachievers under $30,” and sat down and watched the news.

​There are maybe a half a dozen of these cooking passages dispersed throughout the book, and the effect is oddly rejuvenating, as if we have shared the meal on more than just paper, and now we’re ready to jump back in.

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​Confession: I picked up Cherry Beach because I saw it described it as ‘The Wire for Toronto.’ My expectation was that this would take the sociological approach, or ‘the Dickensian aspect’, as The Wire once poked fun at itself. That is, a street-level focus, using the characters and plot to look at the social causes of crime, examine the zeitgeist of contemporary urban life, and maybe throw in some inside details about how a city really runs. A state-of-the-nation novel, but for crime. But Cherry Beach isn't that (for a Torontonian take on The Wire, John McFetridge’s Swap might be a better fit).
 
Don’t get me wrong, Gillmor knows what he’s talking about when he describes, for example, the nature of power in Toronto:

While it was true that the residue of the Family Compact still wielded a disproportionate amount of power, it was also true that the power was eroding, that the defences had been breached and every exclusive neighbourhood in the city had the complexion of a Gap ad. The shape of money was changing and what was emerging was a new, invisible hierarchy that gave off a high-pitched sound that only bankers could hear.
 
There were still lapsed Methodists who had clout, but real estate was the city’s one true religion. In the core, empty churches were being turned into condos. The real God wasn’t above us, but beneath our feet.

​But in Cherry Beach, that’s just icing on the cake, not as intrinsic to the novel as it would be in, say, a Richard Price joint.
 
A blurb on the back cover suggests Gillmor is “capturing the zeitgeist with sweeping brushstrokes.” That’s accurate and enviable, but a sweeping brushstroke is essentially the opposite of The Wire’s approach to focusing on the minutely observed details of contemporary urban life.
 
If anything, Cherry Beach is more in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett—and better off for it.

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​Crime fiction has another problem, more serious than the question of the detective’s (lack of) domestic life.
 
How does the genre continue to justify using police as protagonists in an age when the police seem intent on proving over and over again that they aren’t anyone’s friend? Students are protesting against the most heinous crime of the century, and the police show up to crack their skulls. Every city has at least a case or two that is, if not as outrageous as what was done to George Floyd, then pretty close. City services suffering? Sorry, the police need to buy another tank.
 
I suppose this accounts for the rise of the psychological thriller, where the protagonist is a civilian. But there are still plenty of novels, as here, where the detective is a detective. There are tricks that help to make it palatable: making the nature of the crime more barbaric than standard police brutality, something the urbane liberal would naturally want to see the police solve; making sure the reader knows our cop protagonist is one of the good ones, who acknowledges there’s a problem on the force, knows because he sees it every day, etc.
 
Gillmor employs these tricks himself: “I looked like the head-cracking cohort but sounded like a diversity hire,” Detective Abel says of himself at one point. It would be difficult to write a crime novel today without doing this sort of thing to some extent. But the way this awareness is written into the book seemed to promise something more than just tactically sidestepping a thorny issue. I waited patiently as the procedural aspect kicked into gear, enjoying the ride-along but growing a bit worried as it seemed like the narrative was sliding a little too smoothly towards its conclusion. But then Detective Jamieson Abel gets an unexpected phone call, summoning him to the titular Cherry Beach. In short: the promise is fulfilled, because Gillmor understands that in the Hammett tradition, a detective doesn’t carry out his work with the logical deduction of a Sherlock Holmes, but by rattling cages to see who shakes, and to see who rattles back. This inevitably leads to violence. I needn’t have worried.
 
More than that, art doesn’t need to solve culture’s problems for it to justify its own existence. It certainly doesn’t need to hold itself to a higher standard than the actual culture around it. What it can do is imagine avenues of exploration (and their consequences) that simply aren’t available in real life.
 
Don’t skip this one.

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Adam McPhee’s fiction has appeared in Old Moon Quarterly, Ahoy Comics, and has twice been longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize. His book reviews have appeared in minor literature[s], The Temz Review, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. He writes the Substack newsletter Adam’s Notes. Originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, he now lives in Alberta.