Review: Contemplation of a Crime by Susan Juby

Contemplation of a Crime by Susan Juby

Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2025

This is Book 3 of Juby's Helen Thorpe mystery series, and I enjoyed it very much. I was pleased to review it for The British Columbia Review. This article was originally published in The BC Review on May 30, 2025.

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It was with a good measure of anticipation that I settled in to read Vancouver Island author Susan Juby’s latest novel featuring Buddhist butler-sleuth Helen Thorpe. Once again, Helen finds herself at the scene of an unexpected crime that will put her equanimity–the ability to maintain calm and balance even when the going gets tough–to the test. In Contemplation of a Crime what begins as a healing retreat on a cozy West Coast island becomes a life-or-death struggle, and Helen is firmly in the middle of the action.

This is the third in Juby’s delightful, humorous series featuring Helen, the most improbable of amateur detectives. Having read and enjoyed the first two novels, I feel comfortable with this unassuming, kind and non-judgemental former monastic who, much to her own bewilderment, keeps stumbling upon mysterious crime scenes and ending up the hero. Even if she sometimes doubts her own ability to catch the culprit, I get the sense that I’m always in good hands with Helen at the helm.

Helen is planning a much-needed vacation, meeting up with her fellow butler friends for a few weeks of relaxation. When Helen’s ultra-rich employer Mr. Benedict Levine asks her to postpone her vacation and accompany him to a five-day course called Close Encounters for Global Healing on a nearby island off the coast of Nanaimo, she reluctantly agrees. It’s a bespoke retreat where five participants who hold opposing views on politics and social issues come together in an effort to foster understanding and conflict resolution. Mr. Levine’s son has been asked to take over leadership of the course, but the “token rich person” (yes, the course needs a person of financial privilege) has dropped out, so Mr. Levine will fill in. Not only that, but Mr. Levine and Helen will be participating incognito as Mr. Levine is actually too rich to go as himself. Why does he need Helen? It seems that when one is super-rich and privileged, travelling with a butler is non-negotiable.

Author Susan Juby

It’s not too long before all goes awry when a nefarious scheme puts some retreat-goers at risk. Helen steps up to spearhead the investigation and bring the evil-doers to justice. Fortunately, she won’t have to do it alone. It just so happens that several of the support staff for the retreat cancelled at the last minute, and who better to help out in Helen’s time of need than her butler friends Gavin and Murray, and the wonderful, hapless butler-in-training Nigel. Readers may remember them from the previous books, and I was delighted to see them again. I’ll even forgive Juby the blatant plot manipulation, because it wouldn’t be a Helen Thorpe mystery without these lively characters. “That was the butler way,” Juby writes, “They were like a manners-oriented Navy SEAL unit. When they were needed, they appeared. For each other and for their clients.”

Juby’s brand of melding topical social issues, mindfulness, and crime works its magic once again. This time she goes all in on our current social ill of hyper-polarization, an increasingly familiar refrain in Canada. The participants of Close Encounters are five troubled characters, and each one brings their own agendas and secrets to the retreat. Our cast includes a checked-out social media consumerist, a bitter and depressed environmentalist, an internet troll, an angry trucker convoy member, and a purported white nationalist. Oh, and did I mention that this is also humour-forward? It’s hilarious, with heart.

The first third of the book has us getting to know these mismatched souls—with all their horribleness and their pathos—and it’s engaging. Juby goes all in with these characters: they’re caricatures at first, but then they’re not; we see their vulnerabilities, and that’s why it’s so easy to become absorbed in the narrative. The point of view changes often, which works to build empathy and compassion, part of the mojo of this series. In one chapter, the participants are asked to each say one thing that they’re especially good at, and it is sweet in an offbeat way. They have skills such as being “objectively good at choosing colours,” and being excellent at playing Grand Theft Auto. I can’t believe I was so absorbed in this confess-all of skills. I’d just met these characters and already I cheered for them. But that’s the type of book this is.

Even though Helen’s mindfulness training is always at the forefront, I appreciated that she’s pushed to her limit a few times, in part because she’s still working through the intrusive memories of the peril she experienced in the last book. Life brings unexpected twists and turns, and sometimes they’re hard to work through. Helen recognizes her own efforts to avoid the discomfort of life not going the way one would hope, “But try as she might, nothing stayed organized, no one stayed happy, events unfolded in ways that felt personal. Dissatisfaction and suffering arose despite her best efforts.” It makes Helen very human, and so relatable. I was rooting for her!

Susan Juby (© Delgado Photography)

As for the crime, it’s a slow burn at first. There’s not much sign of it until a third of the way through, and then things heat up. If you’re looking for a clever, cerebral whodunit where you can try to solve the mystery before the end of the book, this is not the novel for you. This is more a crime-inspired story than a classic mystery, with collaboration and the power of human interconnectedness as crime fighting tools.

It’s worth noting that Juby’s compassionate tone extends even to the guilty party… a little. Criminal behaviour is sometimes spurred by longing for things that we don’t have, and that’s evidenced here.

The subject matter feels timely. The conversations delve right into some of the most topical issues that have touched so many of us in the past few years: the pandemic, the Ottawa truck convoy, and deeply held beliefs about vaccines. Also present is deep seated anxiety about climate change, or the denial of the same. Helen knows that trying “to protect and build a solid, unchangeable sense of self leads to suffering. Having very strong and inflexible beliefs is a form of self-protection.” It felt genuine to hear these characters speak from their own worldviews and to explore their insecurities and fears, all with gentle compassion and, again, that touch of humour. Bonus points for a quick discussion of karma that had me pondering my own understanding of the concept, all in the middle of a crime-solving novel.

Contemplation of a Crime is a mystery-solving caper of mismatched, flawed humans who find their higher selves emerging despite their best intentions, and I loved getting to know all of them. Though the characters use their deductive skills, I suspect that the underlying superpower at work is a kind of begrudging kindness. Juby’s initial set up emphasizes the hyper-polarization we see today, but the narrative arc is wholly satisfying, and because this ragtag group can work together and meet in the middle, they emerge as heroes. That unity imparts a distinctly hopeful tone to the book. Is it realistic? I don’t know, but I’d like to think so. In any case, this is exactly what I want from a Helen Thorpe mystery: wonderful characters both old and new; a crime that’s solved with a combination of mindfulness and smarts; and a beneficial dose of equanimity.