Review by Frank Plowright

Eve Zaremba only published six novels, but A Reason to Kill in 1978 was a landmark for being the first of an ongoing series starring a lesbian private detective. Work For A Million adapts the second case of Helen Keremos, and retains the late 1970s Toronto setting despite the novel’s 1986 publication date.

Helen is hired by lawyers working for aspiring singer Sonia Deerfield, able to follow her dreams as she’s won the lottery. Since then she’s been threatened and there have been attempts on her life. With a promised fee of a million dollars, an astounding sum in the 1970s, Helen agrees to move in with the glamorous Sonia and protect her.

It’s the art of Selena Goulding that first attracts the attention for the unusual combination of colour with black and white. Some pages are entirely monochrome, others, like the sample art, feature restricted colour highlights, most often Sonia’s red hair, and full page illustrations are completely in colour. It’s an extremely unusual choice, but it works. The delicacy of the drawing is accentuated, and overall it’s attractive art, although there’s sometimes a posed quality to the people.

Without having read the original novel it’s difficult to know how much of the writing is faithful and how much is choices made by Amanda Deibert adapting the plot, but from very early on there are clumsy moments. The strange transitions on the sample page are surely Deibert’s choice, and needed something connecting the car crash more closely with the phone call. Sonia when first seen is incredibly touchy considering she’s just met Helen, and her being far less forthcoming in other aspects transmits as artificially contrived to maintain mystery. The dialogue doesn’t ring true at the start either, being more in the way of lines spoken, but it gradually falls into place.

However, the faults are far fewer than the likeable aspects. The general plot works well in the manner of a 1970s TV mystery, with well characterised unsavoury and suspicious people aplenty, and Helen is an instantly appealing personality. She’s tough, tenacious and intuitive, yet not infallible, and her abrasive nature provides interesting character clashes. The twists are unpredictable, with almost everyone introduced in the frame for what’s happening at one stage or another, and the ending elegantly follows up on that. Toronto residents may also be interested in seeing how much the city has changed in the last fifty years.

By the end Helen and her world will have hooked anyone who loves a criminal mystery, and more adaptations would be welcome.