The Laundrymanby Dwayne BrennaPublished by Shadowpaw PressReview by Brandon Fick$26.99 ISBN 9781998273522 If you’re looking for a fast-paced historical crime novel, presenting a cross-section of frontier life and a region on the brink of massive changes, then The Laundryman is for you. What Dwayne Brenna achieves in his third novel is twofold: a mystery with twists and turns and two protagonists of differing but complementary personalities; plus, like most worthwhile historical fiction, he touches on issues we still deal with today, including racism, corruption, and the nature of justice. This might sound like a heavy story, and while solving murders is at the heart of The Laundryman, Brenna’s work is more along the lines of Agatha Christie than the ruthless westerns of Cormac McCarthy. The Laundryman focuses on two North-West Mounted Police Officers: Corporal Belvedere, a hard-drinking, laudanum-using officer with five years of experience, and Surgeon Virgil Montgomery, a strait-laced recruit haunted by mistakes in his previous medical practice. They are sent from Battleford to investigate the murder of a Chinese laundryman in Prince Albert in the fall of 1883. But what initially seems to be a one-off murder over a disagreement or racial prejudice expands into a wider conspiracy…

Theories of Everythingby Dwayne BrennaPublished by Shadowpaw PressReview by Brandon Fick$22.99 ISBN 9781998273294 In less than 180 pages, Dwayne Brenna’s short story collection, Theories of Everything, takes readers around the globe into disparate eras and unique voices, inviting them to sample a little bit of everything. More than most short story collections, which often contain similar settings, characters, and themes, Theories of Everything is diverse and irreverently ordered, as if saying: “A story is a story, no matter what it contains. Deal with it.” At least a couple of its fifteen stories will jive with any reader. Whether you want to read about an aged rock star, a couple on the brink of separation, or a murderous parrot, whether you are in the mood for academic satire or the truth about Hollywood, and whether you want to go to Costa Rica, Libya, London, Hawaii, or rural Saskatchewan, it’s all here. Brenna takes a no-nonsense approach to storytelling. Within the first paragraph or even the first few sentences of his stories, you are in the predicament. A fine example being the opening lines of “Isla Mujeres”: “Still in his pyjamas, my husband Jim is stretched out on one of a pair…

Stealing Home by Dwayne Brenna Published by Hagios Press Review by Kris Brandhagen $17.95 978-192671021-1 Stealing Home, a book of poetry by Dwayne Brenna, begins strong, careening through a tour of baseball parks. Some of the more notable parks mused on include Ebbets Field, Candlestick Park, and The Big O. In a poem called “Shea Stadium, New York City, 2005” Brenna uses the senses to provide vivid imagery: “the thwack of hickory…and rumble rising from expensive seats down low.” Here, auditory language is used to evoke the sounds of the game, which causes seasoned fans to reminisce about their ballpark experiences, or allow someone who doesn’t understand sports fans to put his/herself in their place. For those of you scoring at home, this also calls to mind that before television, most people experienced professional baseball through radio only. At the end of the first section, in “Cairns Field, Saskatoon, 2010,” Brenna evokes the visual: “the infield grass is luminous, as green / as spring in your imaginings. The lights / of Saskatoon are dots against the sky, / the deep blue sky behind right field.” This is my favourite passage, putting me right back on the mound. I recall seeing…

Our Kind of Work: The Glory Days and Difficult Times of 25th Street Theatre by Dwayne Brenna Published by Thistledown Press Review by Keith Foster $18.95 978-1-897235-95-9 When your work is a labour of love, every day is payday. This is the philosophy keenly expressed in Dwayne Brenna’s Our Kind of Work: The Glory Days and Difficult Times of 25th Street Theatre. An actor himself, Brenna provides the inside story of 25th Street Theatre, the first professional theatre company in Saskatoon. In addition to his own recollections, his richly detailed text incorporates numerous press reviews of the plays presented. The impetus behind this experimental theatre company was its first artistic director, the irrepressible Andy Tahn, who proposed producing prairie-based, original plays. The theatre provided a venue for emerging playwrights such as Ken Mitchell and Connie Gault, and actors like Janet Wright, later of “Corner Gas” fame. As the subtitle suggests, however, this labour of love involved some birthing and growing pains. Lack of space and finances persistently plagued the company, as did the clash of personalities between actors and directors. Bad reviews and the spectre of censorship also raised their heads. The premiere of one play, Cold Comfort, described by…