Mystery and Ambiguity

I have a friend with whom it has become customary, after sharing an occasional dinner, to then share a movie. Regularly this is a DVD of a film we’ve never heard of, and almost as regularly at its end we will turn to each other and say, “Well. Wasn’t that an odd little flick?”

This is not to be confused with “My god, that was awful”—in those cases we say, “My god, that was awful.” It is just shorthand for something indefinably not one thing or another, about which we’re left puzzled, possibly intrigued, but surely lost for a decisive thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship, Memory and Murder is, often eloquently, a print version of one of those odd little flicks, a hybrid book whose virtues and deficits aptly reflect its hybrid times.

On its face, it falls into the true crime category, since its flesh is formed around the bones of the 23-year-old beauty queen and student nurse Alexandra...