The Ferryman Will Be There (Book review)

Rosemary Aubert The Ferryman Will Be There (2001) “An Ellis Portal Mystery”. This is the third in the series. Portal was a judge, but alcohol and adultery led to homelessness. For a while, he lived in a cave in the Don Valley. He has succeeded in climbing out of the valley, literally and figuratively.
    Now Det. Sgt. Matt West  enlists his help in finding a girl whose father was murdered while stepping out of a limousine on his way to a film festival bash. The girl has gone back onto the streets. Portal’s curiosity and orneriness entangle him in the murder investigation, too. His  journey takes him through derelict buildings, fancy offices, and of course the streets and valleys of Toronto. Like any hero of a quest, he has companions on the way, but here they travel mostly in the background; half the time Portal doesn’t even know they’re there. The monsters he must defeat are drug dealers, traffickers in women, and his own memories. Several inconclusive plot-lines from the earlier books move a few steps towards resolution.
     The mystery, such as it is, resolves plausibly enough, but Aubert’s focus is on street life, the homeless, and Portal’s haphazard approach to redemption. Though the book isn’t a page-turner, it sticks with you. I want to know the details of the back story, told in the first two books, so I’ll look out for them. Above average entertainment. I can see it as a moody, bleak TV series, set in the ramshackle and grungy buildings and streets where the homeless scrabble for a living, contrasting with elegant, expensive spaces in which the mysteries of finance are performed. **-½