The Main

More a set of character studies than a true blue mystery novel, the Main is simply wonderful. Even though it is not filled with huge events, it never lags. The protagonist, an aging police detective has made Montreal's Saint Laurent Boulevard, better known as The Main, his personal responsibility. He is known and respected, though certainly not loved, by everyone. When a man is murdered in an alley, an investigation begins that takes us into various corners of Montreal society. It's amazing that Trevanian, who was born in Albany, NY and spent a long time teaching at the University of Texas, seems to know Montreal so well. The setting and the characters work together to tell an atmospheric story that goes well beyond the read it-enjoy show more it-forget it pattern of much detective fiction. Highly recommended. show less

The Main is Montreal's immigrant district. It is noisy, its sounds a babel of languages and traffic and life being lived. It's dirty, often violent, and is both the beat of thirty-year police veteran Claude LaPointe and his home. LaPointe is a throwback of a cop, who ignores paperwork and roughs up the bad guys when they need it. Needless to say, the modern bureaucrats of the enlightened Montreal Police Department circa the mid 1970s can't wait to get rid of him.

The action of The Main centers around LaPointe's investigation of the murder of an Italian immigrant that opens the novel. And Trevanian writes a top-notch crime novel. But the novel is more a meditation on loneliness and loss, and the fragile connections that people manage to show more make. LaPointe, once too briefly married, has been a widower for thirty years. He works twelve hours a day, checking in and making contact with every corner of the beat he's made his own. Twice a week he plays pinochle--his buddies are two Jewish immigrants and a Catholic priest (and no, the joke possibilities are not lost on the four men), but ultimately he is always alone.

And then one day, as natural as you please and because it's the right thing to do, he brings home an undernourished runaway, a street waif, a hooker, who's been beaten by a client. She's prickly and far too young for him. He's prickly and far too set in his ways. They don't exactly get along, and yet...

The words of a reviewer can't do justice to the beautiful, ravaged, desolate world, full of longing and too much settling, that Trevanian has created. Where his first two books were raucus meta-romps, out-Bonding Bond and paving the way for the Austin Powers of the ensuing decades, this book leaps several levels at once. It is rich with detail of place and character, so powerfully written that the reader's heart aches and soars whether she wants it to or not. show less

It's a bit difficult to explain how different and yet similar each of Trevainian's novels really are. Typical Trevanian, this book offers up some wonderful characters more important than the tale they populate. The swift justice and compassionate cop routine are a bit over the top, but it’s alright if it’s done in the interests of what’s good for the hood, right? Fudging morality seems to be his strong point.

This is my favorite of all the Trevanian books. This books has many levels, it is a crime novel and a love story, and a look at loneliness.

kept my interest

The Main is Montreal’s teeming underworld, where the dark streets echo with cries in a dozen languages, with the quick footsteps of thieves and the whispers of prostitutes. It is a world where violence and brutality are a way of life. To the people of the Main, police lieutenant Claude LaPointe is judge and jury, father confessor and avenging angel. Montreal’s police force has changed over time, but LaPointe has not. His commitment to justice is total, as is his devotion to the Main and its underworld community. But when a cold-blooded murderer invades LaPointe’s territory, he is forced to examine his long-held beliefs and secrets and to confront his own loneliness and mortality. With a cast of unforgettable supporting characters show more and an unusual and remarkable hero, The Main is another gripping tale of death and danger, of action and mystery, by the incomparable Trevanian. show less