The Endless Knot is the 10th novel in Gail Bowen’s mystery series featuring Joanne Kilbourn. Anyone who thought the city of Regina did not possess sufficient fodder for murder and mystery has officially been proven wrong.

In this new novel, journalist Kathryn Morrissey publishes a book detailing the lives of the adult children of prominent Canadian families. These are some troubled offspring. Morrissey gets them and their parents to confess all by telling them her book will help others to avoid their familial troubles.

Morrissey is confronted – and shot at – by Sam Parker, the father of Glenda, a transsexual who is featured in Morrissey’s book. When Parker’s charged with attempted murder, he hires Joanne’s beau, Zack Shreve, as his defence counsel.

Bowen’s efforts to reintroduce us to Kilbourn’s family, friends, and colleagues in the early part of this novel feel strained. Once the novel is up and running, however, characters making their first appearance are integrated into the story more easily. Kilbourn’s role is more observer than sleuth in this outing, but she observes well. And she’s in the middle of the action, dating Zack Shreve and covering the trial for NationTV.

Bowen’s greatest accomplishment in this series may be to make the ordinary extraordinary. The middle-class Prairie world she’s created is our own – or at least it’s one most of us will recognize, even though her world also contains crime that most of us don’t ever face. The contrast between her characters’ ordinary, everyday lives and the sudden intrusion of violence reminds us of the very real pain and shock that such violence causes.