The Publisher Says: Parkdale’s Green Dolphin is a bar of ill repute, and it is there that Tancred Palmieri, a thief with elegant and erudite tastes, meets Willow Azarian, an aging heroin addict. She reveals to Tancred that her very wealthy father has recently passed away, leaving each of his five children a mysterious object that provides one clue to the whereabouts of a large inheritance. Willow enlists Tancred to steal these objects from her siblings and help her solve the puzzle.

A Japanese screen, a painting that plays music, a bottle of aquavit, a framed poem and a model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: Tancred is lured in to this beguiling quest, and even though Willow dies before the puzzle is solved, he presses on.

As he tracks down the treasure, he must enlist the help of Alexander von Würfel, conceptual artist and taxidermist to the wealthy, and fend off Willow’s heroin dealers, a young albino named ‘Nigger’ Colby and his sidekick, Sigismund ‘Freud’ Luxemburg, a clubfooted psychopath, both of whom are eager to get their hands on this supposed pot of gold. And he must mislead Detective Daniel Mandelshtam, his most adored friend.

Inspired by a reading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, The Hidden Keys questions what it means to be honourable, what it means to be faithful and what it means to sin.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm not sure how to tell you about this book. Let me tell you about honorable-thief Tancred:

Tancred was a tall and physically imposing black man, but he was also approachable. He could not sit anywhere for long without someone starting a conversation. This was, his friends liked to say, because his blue eyes were startling and his voice deep and avuncular. So, when he wanted to be alone without necessarily being alone, Tancred answered in French—his maternal tongue—when spoken to by strangers. Few who came into the Dolphin knew the language.

This, I believe, explains Author Alexis's project nicely. He makes a mythic figure, of prodigious endowments of soul and talent, and sets him down at a nexus of Toronto's many worlds. He then seems to stand back and let 'er rip. It feels to me as though Author Alexis more or less "took dictation" when writing this story, and its immediate predecessor Fifteen Dogs (which I read almost a decade ago). The less-than-propulsive pace and the slightly meandering sense of place are, in my observation, best explained by this reality of the creative process. A more plot-driven project, one that was constructed not discovered, wouldn't keep this:

The city had been built by people from innumerable elsewheres. It was a chaos of cultures ordered only by its long streets. It belonged to no one and never would, or maybe it was a million cities in one, unique to each of its inhabitants, belonging to whoever walked its streets.

But, in this structure of discovery, Tancred's observation goes a long way towards making it plain that we are on a quest that surpasses its material goals. Part of the manifestation of this is the quite long time frame of the story...there is time, between Tancred meeting the woman on whose behalf he goes on this quest for and the time he actually begins the quest, for him to suffer an acutely painful personal tragedy...and its, politely said, abrupt ending.

It's a sad, death-haunted quest. It's a life-affirming choice for Tancred to take it on. It's amazing how much fun it is to watch a character decide to give up a past of anti-social thievery and remain a thief, only pro-social now. It's a book with a lot of good aperçus, and a few moments where one wonders what the heck Author Alexis was thinking. Tancred isn't a traditional series-mystery sleuth. The two books featuring him I've read aren't really properly series mysteries. They're no less delightful for that. The puzzle set by, and for, Tancred's client is resolved neatly at the end. Permaybehaps a bit too neatly...the source of the missing star.

But the reason it's got four of 'em is down to moments like this:

“I believe God is an impediment to good. All those people acting in his name don’t bother to think their actions through. They’re incapable of good...No, that’s not right...There are any number of them who accidentally do good. ... What I mean is it’s more difficult to do good with God in the equation.”

Heady stuff, philosophically in my wheelhouse, and not the only example I could've chosen. Spoiled for choice gets a book a good rating. ( )

Gentleman thief on a Toronto treasure hunt.

A fun quest adventure with some wonderful obscure clues. Also a bonus for those who know Toronto (although the author's foreword note denies any similarities to Toronto and Etobicoke). I was looking/hoping for something a bit more clever with the characters esp. the relationship between the policeman and the gentleman thief, but that didn't seem to pan out. That was probably the only thing that kept this from "5 out of 5" territory.

Trivia
I didn't know before reading this that "Linje Aquavit" liquor is aged at sea and travels a round trip from Norway to Australia and back, in order to cross the equator twice. ( )

Tancred Palmieri is a thief with honour. Willow Azarian is a heroin addict with a vast fortune and a mystery she can’t let go of: five siblings, five artworks heavily invested with personal meaning and a potentially collective direction to a hidden treasure. When Willow convinces Tancred to gather (i.e. steal) the four other artworks from her siblings, she sets him on a path of danger and intrigue, crossed loyalty, and filial devotion.

Things are never exactly what they seem. And it’s possible this novel is not exactly what it seems. Alexis’ acknowledged playfulness with form and substance will have you reading with slight suspicion. And when one of the central characters of his previous novel, Fifteen Dogs, makes a cameo appearance, alarm bells might start to go off. But the novel does not change course. Tancred continues to pursue his goal with the legerdemain typical of the pickpocket he once was. The wonder here is that even almost absurd scenes (stealing a man’s prosthetic leg in order to enter a reputedly impregnable condo fortress) seem just by the way.

Tancred and Willow and Tancred’s childhood friend, Detective Daniel Mandelshtam, are sympathetic figures in their way, but the reader doesn’t get close enough to them to fully engage. And so we stand at an emotional distance to the action. And inevitably that limits our likely enthusiasm for the novel. Unless we learn later, in Alexis’ fifth novel in this Quincunx, that we’ve overlooked some essential hidden key. That’s a real possibility.

Gently recommended. ( )