pickLou has inherited her parents‘ hardware store in a small town near Calgary, and has secretly started cutting an extra key whenever someone asks to have their house key copied. Uh oh. Add Lou to the list of lovable oddballs in this town, and watch her get blackmailed into amateur detective work. Slim, farcical and fun Canlit. #shadowgiller2021
Snowton couldn‘t compete with the Torrington Gopher Hole Museum, where tourists could see stuffed gophers in wedding dresses or gopher facsimiles of early Alberta settlers. Lou had never understood the appeal of the gopher museum, but she had spent many afternoons there with her children and her husband.
[Littens, hands up if you‘ve been to the Torrington museum. 🙋♀️]
Indigo Higgins owned the local bookstore. She stocked poetry from Western Canada, Bart Hastings‘ murder mysteries, and books about birds. It was a well-known fact that Indigo could name collective nouns for birds in any situation, and she often created opportunities to mention an asylum of cuckoos, a museum of waxwings, a charm of goldfinches, or a pretense of bitterns.
pickI was so immersed in this novella that I read it in one sitting! Though mostly plot driven, Leblanc did such an amazing job with these characters, especially Euphemia, but they were all so fleshed out. And the cozy, wintery small town made the perfect setting for an unsolved mystery and the exploration of the notion that everyone knows everything about their neighbours. The enjoyed symbolism of keys too. Written with humor and engrossing prose.
Unlocking | 
