Literate Matters: Mackinac mystery returns in nod to nostalgia

“Superman is coming.”

It’s a lovely idea, right? Full of hope and excitement? Unfortunately, it is no longer possible.

Unless…

Well, even so. While the do-good good guy is now only a memory, this exclamation excites folks, like those drawn to the superhero’s superhuman strength. Or others smitten by his dashing good looks.

The phrase also ignites the buzz that lights the new Mackinac Island story “Somewhere in Crime” from Jim Bolone and Dave McVeigh, with the title’s clear allusion to the cult film from 1979 “Somewhere in Time.” If you know, you know.

Told in flashback as now 41-year-old Jack McGuinn recounts his boyhood exploits for his young family, the story finds him back on Mackinac, once again surrounded by intrigue and mystery, this time working to solve an old murder with the help of a cast of unlikely sleuths.

Speaking of his own nuclear unit, Jack admits, “The McGuinns weren’t perfect.” They were close-knit, however, his grandfather “a genuine World War II hero,” his dad “a successful businessman,” and his mother “beautiful, creative” though her “spirit veered toward the gypsy end of the spectrum.” Even his sister Beth, his sometimes nemesis, “was, in fact, very, very smart.”

But there are troubles brewing when the Hollywood crowd, Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour included, comes to town to film the famous movie.

Hard up against the arrival of the movie crew is the tidy reward offered to solve the murder of island visitor Marjorie Kitmore, as well as the new distance Jack discovers between his parents. If only he can unravel the mystery he can collect the $25,000 reward, thus alleviating the family’s financial troubles, the wedge driving his parents apart.

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Mysteries are hard, however, so while the youthful snoop enlists his pals Gordon and Smitty, Jack turns too to Blaze, the black-clad chain smoking manager and chief spook at the Haunted Theater, where “tourists paid four bucks to wander through the winding halls as wax figures of ghouls and monsters lurked in the corners…” against the backdrop of “haunting organ music.”

Blaze is both foil and fable here, his cryptic messages and vampire-like habits at once engaging and exasperating for Jack and the others.

Turns out too Jack’s mother Ana might have a crush on Reeve, or that her newfound work as seamstress to the movie crew might lure her away from her beloved Mackinac home Wildcliffe Cottage to a life of bohemian rhapsody. All of this, both real and imagined, motivates the young detective.

To the continued credit of Bolone and McVeigh, the pace of the action works well, as do the machinations of the characters. The story arc’s appropriately, and for Mackinac buffs, nothing is out of place, the reference points well placed and sincere, including appearances by the old Arnold Line ferry company, the Stonecliffe (now The Woods) bowling alley, British Landing, Skull Cave, and more. Real insiders will recognize Jack’s basket bike “Sluggo”as a nod to a former co-worker beloved by all who knew him in the 1970s and 1980s.

Even those without vintage Mackinac work histories however will find the book succeeds, as Jack and his crew speed toward uncovering the truth of Kitmore’s murder, while his family bounces between hilarity and nostalgia.

Eventually, Blaze’s oblique clues prove exasperating, so Jack can’t help but feel he’s “a dumb little kid … a dim, shaggy knucklehead” who should have seen more clearly. Readers will be glad he didn’t.

Full disclosure: I’ve never been a fan of “Somewhere in Time.” Reeve as Richard Collier alongside Seymour as Elise McKenna always feels forced and fantastical, nevermind the many ways Mackinac is co-opted to accommodate the charade.

Still, fuller disclosure: I am nonetheless a fan of “Somewhere in Crime.”

Good reading.

This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Literate Matters: Mackinac mystery returns in nod to nostalgia