In Tildon, Ontario, a prime vacation spot for Canada's wealthy, a businessman is discovered dead inside a flaming car. Following this horrific act, Deacon Riis, the town's only journalist, finds himself at the center of a strange conspiracy literally to light the town on fire. As other members of the town are caught up in the increasing violence and depravity, Deacon discovers that the acts are all linked to the writing of his foster father, a man whose novels depicted humanity at its most disturbed. No Quarter has the skeleton of a thriller, but author John Jantunen consistently zigs where other narratives would zag, creating a story that is far stranger and disturbing.No Quarter is meta-textual, to say the least. There are stories within stories, retellings of the characters' lives in the style of George Cleary, whose work is at the heart of the killings. Jantunen juggles multiple narrators, having them cross at both expected and strange angles. Since Tildon is a small town, it's no wonder that the characters know each other, but as their pasts and motives are revealed, their connections deepen in ways that border on the supernatural. It's not clear whether Jantunen wants George to be some sort of prophet, or simply a man so canny at reading other people that his fiction expertly maps onto real life out of sheer brilliance. Either way, the connections add a wonderful layer of dread to No Quarter, where Deacon always seems to be a day late and a dollar short in the face of what's happening to him and his town.
By the end of No Quarter, far more questions have been raised than answered, which is fitting for the start of a projected series. Book 1 of the Tildon Chronicles, it is clearly doing a fair amount of expository lifting for future works, fleshing out the lives of everyone Deacon comes into contact with. This is both a good and bad thing: while Jantunen gives ample time to expanding his little world and giving the narrative room to breathe, it also makes it hard to tell which facts are salient and which are simply atmosphere. One motif of the novel is people endlessly re-reading George's books, finishing the last one only to immediately pick up the first. It's too bad Jantunen's readers can't do the same and find out what it all means--at least not yet. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.
Shelf Talker: No Quarter by John Jantunen explores an outburst of violence in a small town in Ontario, Canada.