Byron and his long-time friend Allan are married to the Winter sisters. When Allan suffers a stroke, the secrets of his illicit business are revealed. The complexities of Byron’s relationships with both sisters are at the heart of this novel, as is his childhood memory of an accident that left him disabled.

Linden McIntyre’s troubling, captivating novel, The Winter Wives, takes the reader on a murky voyage through a world of shifting allegiances, fluid identities, moral ambiguities, hidden agendas, and plenty of closely guarded secrets. The story begins in the present day, with long-time friends and business partners Byron and Allan on the golf course. This is Byron’s story, and he describes with distressing immediacy the moment when Allan collapses at the tee. Allan has suffered a stroke, an event that not only sets in motion everything that follows, but which also brings the notion of mortality alarmingly into focus for everyone involved. Allan and Byron have known each other for decades, having met while both were attending an east-coast university. It’s an unlikely alliance. Allan—brash, athletic, ambitious—later quits university and embarks on a business career, an enterprise that seems to involve a veneer of legitimate undertakings masking some truly unsavoury activities, but which nonetheless makes him rich and takes him around the world. Byron—unassuming, smart, self-conscious about his limp, which is the result of a childhood accident—obtains a law degree but stays in Nova Scotia to nurse his mother through her struggle with Alzheimer’s. Early in his career, disillusioned with a position at a law firm that’s leading nowhere, Byron allows Allan to recruit him into the business. The other partners in the story are Annie (married to Byron) and Peggy (married to Allan). They are sisters and, by profession, accountants. Both work for Allan. Both seem to know more than they let on to Byron.

Byron, our narrator, is shaped and haunted by the accident that scarred him for life. The precise circumstances of what happened are elusive: the violence of the incident has stayed with him, but his recall is limited to a few flickering, fragmented images. He has no one to ask since his mother refused to talk about it, and, with her passing, all the participants other than him are dead. In the absence of certainty, he’s left with suspicion and innuendo.

McIntyre’s novel chronicles, over many years, the complex interweaving of business affairs, money, physical attraction, and emotional commitment among the four main players. Trust is an ever-present motif in this narrative journey, the erosion of which leads to intrigue and betrayal.

As time goes by, physical decline rears its ugly head: Allan’s stroke and mental impairment, Byron’s memory troubles and his growing fear that he’ll share his mother’s fate and lose himself to dementia. But even when all seems lost, circumstances can change, the balance of power can shift, and as Allan’s business empire crumbles and damaging secrets are dragged into the light of day, Byron finds there’s an advantage to be had in standing back and letting people believe what they want to believe. As we approach an inevitable reckoning, Peggy and Annie seem to have gained control, but have they really?

Linden MacIntyre’s novels are populated by flawed characters who act selfishly, who are weak, who drink too much, and who regret their actions when it’s far too late to make any difference. The Winter Wives follows a similar pattern. The world of this novel harbours shocking secrets in abundance and most of the relationships are built on lies. For these people, deception is a way of life. It may be lurid, but it makes for an extravagant, large-scale entertainment that leaves us pondering what it means to really know another person. ( )

THE WINTER WIVES is the eighth Linden MacIntyre book I have read, and I have loved every one of them. MacIntyre's latest offering is, like all of his fiction, a largely character-driven novel. And it is also set in the author's own home territory of Nova Scotia, with its narrator, Byron, a native of the small community of Malignant Cove, who grew up lobstering with his widowed mother. Byron (real name Angus) is a nickname he got in high school from Peggy Winter, one of the Winter sisters (Peggy and Annie) because, like Lord Byron, he limped. Byron's limp, however, is not due to a birth defect, like the poet's (who was born with a club foot), but was caused by a childhood accident, which is itself central to the plot.

Besides Byron, there are three other main characters here - the Winter sisters, who become the the Winter wives of the title, when Annie marries Byron, and Peggy marries Allan Chase, the fourth character, who meets Byron at University, and becomes his lifelong, and remotely mysterious, friend. Allan, called "the great Chase," due to his football prowess in college, soon drops out of school and disappear into a shadowy career in crime which takes him all over the U.S. and Mexico, and finally brings him back to Toronto, a seemingly successful and wealthy businessman. Byron, in the meantime, finishes college and law school and joins a small firm in Halifax. What happens over the the next thirty-plus years shows us that things - and people - are often not what they seem. When Allan approaches Byron to become a part of his shadowy criminal empire, Byron is initially reluctant, but, because both the Winter sisters are already a part of Allan's enterprise, he finally joins the "family business." Then Allan suffers a stroke, the police come to call, a mysterious "Russian" shows up, and money laundering and offshore bank accounts come into play. And Byron's mother descends rapidly into dementia, causing him to wonder if he himself could be affected. And there is too the longtime unrequited love he feels for Peggy, his sister-in-law and Allan's wife.

What may sound like a stew of characters, events and circumstances all works amazingly well, and kept me up reading into the wee hours, to an ending that left me satisfied, but also wondering if there might me more, if Byron might show up in another year or two in MacIntyre's next book. I hope so. Because I love the way this guy writes. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

MacIntyre’s most recent novel is an odd one, and the problems start with the title, which feels increasingly peculiar as the narrative develops. The book focuses less on the Winter sisters—Peggy and Annie—the “wives” of the title (who remain shadowy, undeveloped characters throughout) than on the unlikely friendship between the men they marry. Byron, the narrator of the story, is an introverted rural Nova Scotian who attended high school with the sisters. He has a history of mostly buried emotional trauma and a physical handicap acquired as a result of a serious accident in childhood. His given name is Angus, but in high school Peggy nicknamed him for the Romantic poet because, like Byron, he limped. The moniker stuck. Though he ultimately marries the calm, practical Annie, the alluring Peggy is the one he carries a torch for. Assuming she’s entirely out of his league, when the two are at university, at Peggy’s request, Byron introduces her to his new friend, the handsome, charismatic Allan Chase, a gifted athlete from Toronto. (Allan had struck up a conversation with Byron one evening as the two waited for the dining hall to open, and the young men subsequently became inseparable, leading some to speculate they were gay.) Peggy eventually marries Allan for reasons that are never clear.

At the time of their casual first meeting, Allan leads Byron to believe that he’s attending the East Coast university on a football scholarship. As the story unfolds, we learn there are lot of other things Allan leads Byron—and any number of others—to believe. It becomes increasingly clear to the reader, if not to the rather dim Byron, that Allan is not who he says he is. He’s a shifty character who lacks a moral compass and thrives on risk. When he drops out of university to go on the road as a trucker, Byron, who’s determined to attend law school, keeps in touch, even visiting his pal in Toronto and observing one of Allan’s drug deliveries play out. Allan tells Byron that about 99% of the cargo he carries by truck is legal; the other 1% not so much. Byron, who plays life safely and cautiously, is relatively untroubled by his friend’s “business” activities. As he pursues a law degree, enters the legal profession, and deals with his widowed mother who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he has little time to keep track of Allan’s activities. A visit to Florida is clarifying, however: Allan appears to have entered the criminal big leagues, dealing with cartels and distributing illicit drugs across North America. He’s got the fancy digs and an art collection to prove he’s made it. Ultimately, he turns to real estate—actually a cover for some heavy-duty money laundering. Both the Winter sisters, who have become accountants, end up working for him. Ultimately, after seeing his law career falter, Byron, too, joins Allan’s company. In fact, he’s named CEO and manages the legal aspects of the business, serving as signatory to deals whose details he chooses not to understand. Allan has indicated to that he wants his own name kept off the record, telling Byron, “I want you to be me.” Byron happily obliges. He’s always wanted to be Allan, or someone like him.

We wouldn’t have a novel, though, if trouble wasn’t brewing. At one point, the police start sniffing around, interested in a particular client and real estate transaction that Byron signed off on. He manages to put the cops off for a while, but his control of matters is pretty slippery when Allan has a serious stroke on the golf course and is found to be succumbing to vascular dementia. There are a lot of secrets Allan has kept to himself. None of his three friends know the extent of his operations.

All of this provides quite a fascinating premise for a novel, and I found the book’s first two-thirds quite absorbing. However, it’s my impression that the author set up a situation he was unable to satisfactorily resolve. There’s a long stretch in the novel where no one seems to be who he represents himself to be. Add to this confusion yet another detail MacIntyre throws into the mix—that is, that Byron himself may have inherited early-onset Alzheimer’s from his mother. It all became a bit much for me, and I was entirely unconvinced and dissatisfied with the conclusion, which ultimately seemed ridiculously pat and underwhelming.

MacIntyre is a well-known Canadian investigative journalist, who turned to novel writing in retirement. He received the prestigious Giller Prize for an earlier work of literary fiction, which I’ve not read. This is the first of his novels I’ve read, and I was frankly disappointed. The Winter Wives certainly has potential but ultimately lacked the quality I expected from him.

I wish to thank the publisher and Net Galley for providing me with a digital copy of the novel for review purposes.

Rating: 2.5 ( )

Lifelong friends since university, Byron and Allan are enjoying a game of golf when Allan has a stroke. Faced with his mortality, Allan decides he needs to make some decisions concerning his extensive business empire. He enlists the help of his wife, Peggy Winter; her sister and Byron’s wife, Annie Winter, who has served as his accountant; and Byron who has been his lawyer for many of his deals. At the same time, Byron is worried about showing the early signs of dementia which claimed his mother.

Byron, the narrator, admits that he and Allan are a “strange pair. Two guys who didn’t have a thing in common.” Their friendship seems unlikely. Allan is the wheeler-dealer who lives in Toronto. Byron tells his wife that, ‘’Allan is my oldest friend. I’d trust him with my life. But Allan is a criminal.” Byron, meanwhile, is a lawyer reluctant to move from his family homestead in rural Nova Scotia. Because of a traumatic childhood injury, he has been left with a limp and a faulty memory.

Neither Byron nor Allan is particularly likeable. Allan’s financial success has been built on drugs and money laundering; Byron is aware of his friend’s shady dealings and even facilitates them, though he keeps himself at a distance from day-to-day operations and chooses not to look too closely. Byron claims to have spent sleepless nights debating “the fine line between protecting and enabling,” before agreeing to work for Allan, but there is little evidence of an ethical struggle. He justifies his actions by arguing that “everything we do is compromised at some point. We survive by compromise, by moral flexibility." Then, any sympathy I felt for Byron is eradicated after an encounter between him and Peggy.

The book asks whether we can really know people: “Byron. Annie. Peggy. Allan. Always strangers to each other, always strangers to ourselves. Who are we?” Byron states, “People are inscrutable surfaces. They are social fabrications, concealing private lives that are unknowable.” Of course, some people make certain they are unknowable. Allan, for example, has a phobia about signing anything. He also used different names: “Allan had many names – inventions he could use when necessary then leave behind, as irrelevant as worn-out shoes. A name is a persona, he’d say, and a persona has no substance.” Peggy describes her husband as “a fiction, a creative enterprise that he’s been working on for decades.”

Byron thinks he knows Allan: “A name is only a name. Identity is something else, something deep and private, shared only with those who, over time, we come to trust. I took for granted that the list of people he trusted was very short. Me and Annie. And obviously, Peggy.” Byron tells Peggy that he knows “the Allan he’s always wanted me to know” but it becomes clear there is much he doesn’t know. A mystery in the novel is who Allan really is.

The book is being described as a thrilling psychological drama, but I didn’t find it especially thrilling. It is not fast paced enough to be a thrilling. I also did not find it to be as compelling a read as I had expected because I found it difficult to care about what happened to the characters. And the idea that people may not be what they seem is hardly original.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

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