Crammed with Crime

The Glass Harmonica is set in Newfoundland, but it is not necessarily a Newfoundland book. Russell Wangersky focuses on one street in St. John’s, rather than taking on the whole East Coast cosmology. A narrow focus, but The Glass Harmonica is a wonderful work, a large work, lyrical at times (children “can feel the currents in a room the way eagles find thermals”), yet the prose is clean, hard and informative, revealing hopes and spite as the narrative moves house to house on McKay Street.

The book is reminiscent of Dubliners or Winesburg, Ohio, but the novel can also be compared to television fare such as Desperate Housewives’ Wisteria Lane, Coronation Street or The Wire, and I mean that comparison in the best way. This book would make a compelling gossipy TV series. Suspicious eyes always watching and murderous secrets behind old glass windows. Romance! Intrigue! Latvian factory ships in the...