Ottawa Citizen
December 29, 2002
From Crime Scene
By Mike Gillespie

Other New Releases

Ottawa author/artist Ilze Berzins has a new, brooding mystery on the shelves. Riga Mortis (Albert Street Press; $24.95) is the fifth in a series of novels that has included Death in the Glebe and Revenge on the Rideau. Filled with an eclectic cast, Riga Mortis stars two Ottawans (he an ex-Ottawa Citizen reporter; she a former legal secretary) who, in the grips of mid-life crises, follow their roots to new careers in an independent Latvia. But life in Riga is no bed of roses, as Berzins points out, painting a painstakingly clear portrait of a post-Soviet society torn by freedom. The two ex-pats become entangled in each other and in a scandal that Berzins artfully ratchets up to a grand conclusion.