Review: Asylum Is “a Complex and Heartbreaking Mystery”

“There is a serial killer loose in Montreal, and the mayor asks Martine LeDuc, his director of PR, to act as liaison with the police department. Four women have been killed, their bodies left posed obscenely on park benches. When the police charge a homeless man with the murders, Martine is afraid the real killer is still at large. Luckily, renegade police detective Julian Fletcher is as convinced as Martine of the homeless man’s innocence, and the two continue to investigate on their own. Martine uncovers a link between the four women: all were involved with the decades-old Duplessis orphanage scandal. Orphanages found they could get more money from the government if the orphans were mentally ill, so the children were sent to asylums, where many of them received lobotomies, electroshock treatments, and hallucinogens. The story alternates between the present-day investigation and the first-person story of one of the orphans, an approach that succeeds in giving the tragedy a human dimension. A complex and heartbreaking mystery.”

Source: Booklist Reviews