Once upon a time a mystery was a mystery. Readers could count on a crime (hopefully, nothing too suggestive of real life), a handful of suspects, a crime-solver (typically an isolated fantasy figure), a few red herrings, a dash of scenery, human foible, the crime-doer’s downfall, and, perhaps, an epilogue.

Fortunately, in recent years a posse of bold, new, mostly American crime writers from diverse backgrounds and cultures have revitalized the genre, moving it beyond the sphere of the traditional whodunit into a realm both more literary and more reflective of contemporary society.

Nowadays there’s talk of richness and diversity, layers of meaning, social issues, and multi-isms (multicultural, multiethnic, and multi-lifestyle characters and settings). And, judging from this selection of recent homegrown thrillers, Canadian authors, like their American and international counterparts, are doing their best to expand the genre with vibrant locales, complex characters, and thought-provoking themes.

On the downside, all this stimulating diversity can be somewhat disconcerting for mystery fans if no crime is forthcoming after 200 pages of otherwise absorbing drama.

Such is the case with acclaimed B.C. author Leona Gom’s second Vicky Bauer mystery Double Negative. After the initial introduction where Bauer – a former film scholar and struggling supply teacher based in Vancouver – awaits interrogation at a police station, Double Negative’s actual crime scenario does not unfold until near the book’s end.

Despite my nagging suspicion that nobody was going to get knocked off, that no real crime would be forthcoming, I was impressed by how Gom nails the reader with her exploration of human relationships – in this case, family abuse, violence, and guilt.

Gom pitches her protagonist into a world of grinding realism – a hospitalized husband in a semicoma, and an estranged father who, after walking out on Bauer and her mother years before, returns to harangue his daughter on a daily basis for fresh socks.

Clearly this is not the stuff of delirious make-believe, but Gom’s slow-dawning puzzler pays off. Instead of blood spills, Gom offers up the ultimate blood bath – the human condition, and the emotional crimes we commit against each other. There’s no closure for the faint-hearted, and for fans of life’s larger issues and sometimes heart-sinking revelations, Gom’s series is deceptively gruesome.

If it’s fun you’re after (and who isn’t?) the Queen of England is always good for a laugh. Death at Windsor Castle is the third installment in Winnipeg’s C. C. Benison’s royal series featuring Jane Bee, a Canadian traveller who enlists as a housemaid at Buckingham Palace and discovers a talent for crime solving.

Once again Benison (real name Doug Whiteway) tosses a dead body into the royal household (this time sliced through with a ceremonial sword and a Garter – as in knighthood honour – fastened at the knee). The Queen, having established an amiable working relationship in the previous two novels with Bee, summons her trusted minion to sniff out the killer.

After all, Bee’s credentials as an amateur sleuth are beyond reproach. Her father is a staff sergeant with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, her mother is a journalist, and as Her Majesty herself points out in Death at Buckingham Palace (Benison’s debut), Bee is a sensible Canadian and “Canadians are rather sensible people.”

Although Benison’s series is rife with inside humour – below-stairs nicknames for the Queen (“Mother”), bothersome run-ins with the canis horribilis (the corgies) – his books rarely touch on the real-life sagas that grip the Royals. (Death at Windsor Castle was written before August 31, 1997 and therefore passing references to Princess Diana are in the present tense.)

And despite amusing and fascinating insights into palace life, the stories tend to run to familiar patterns and one wonders how far this campy, light-legged series can go before the guffaws turn to groans. So far, however, the Windsor hook is a resounding success, and with each book the Queen’s role grows ever larger (to the point where she is now practically a sidekick). Not even Sherlock Holmes could top that.

With the growing popularity of anthropological mysteries – involving a particular culture, social, or ethnic group – Canada’s multicultural melting pot must surely be ripe for the killing. One new entry is Larry Warwaruk’s The Ukrainian Wedding, set in Manitoba during the Second World War. As the title suggests, the story revolves around a Ukrainian community and the build-up to a wedding.

The main action concerns Marusia Budka, a Ukrainian temptress “as strong and fresh as a lusty turnip,” whose free-spirited ways and beautifully formed body are the fixation of every man within leering distance. It almost goes without saying that Budka’s spirit and beauty are inevitably her downfall, and her body is eventually discovered lifeless, hideously transformed by decay and maggots.

Warwaruk’s book is particularly un-mystery-like in that no one character steps forward to fulfill the role of “sleuth,” it takes its time setting the scene and introducing characters, and it does not appear to have been crafted for the purposes of serial kill (an ongoing series). But series are where the readers are, and once readers have made a commitment to a particular author, their loyalty is sealed.

This fall Turnstone Press launches a new suspense series by Winnipeg-based author Karen Dudley with Hoot to Kill: A Robyn Devara Mystery under its new imprint for literary genre fiction, Ravenstone.

Dudley combines a number of elements currently all the rage in the mystery milieu: Exotic locations with edu-tainment value (a remote logging town in B.C.), an unusual and interesting career (field biology), issues (environmentalism versus the logging industry), hobbies of interest to general readers (bird watching), pets (preferably feline), and a less-than-perfect love life, but with the hope of love to come.

When field biologist Devara visits Marten Valley, a B.C. logging town, to survey old-growth forests for the endangered spotted owl (hence the book’s title), she becomes embroiled in demonstrations and counter-demonstrations by old-growth loggers and a militant environmental group.

Before long a logging foreman is found dead, and Devara in true mystery fashion must reveal the killer in order to clear her own name from the list of suspects, and save herself from becoming another victim. Rats! And there’s a man she fancies too, but with her track record….

As feel-good, crack-paced, chuckly, and informative as Devara’s debut is, her tongue-in-cheek flavour does not play as smoothly as Benison’s Bee mysteries, and lacks the assurance and depth of a Vicky Bauer.

All the ingredients for a nineties nouveau mystery are there, but the twang is missing.