A Zigzagging Quest

Sherlock, meet Indiana. Indiana, meet Sherlock. In his third novel, Pilgrims of the Upper World, Jamieson Findlay combines Arthur Conan Doyle’s style of zigzagging detective fiction with a fast-paced quest narrative that recalls Raiders of the Lost Ark. Findlay — who lives in Chelsea, Quebec, and won the $10,000 (U.S.) University of New Orleans Lab Prize with this manuscript — offers readers a well-written and surprisingly poignant page-turner.

Set in present-day Geneva, the story follows the middle-aged bookseller Tavish McCaskill. As he lives his quiet life, McCaskill grapples with lingering feelings for his ex-wife, Julie: “Often, when couples split, they become strangers to one another. Not us. So I liked to think.” He can’t stand her arrogant new husband, a neurologist who’s “brusque and unfinished as a new mountain, craggy and sharp-jawed, fault lines everywhere.�...