MUSIC FOR LOVE OR WAR

"According to what we've been told, the source of all knowledge is somewhere just south of Sunset Boulevard. The problem is that Danny has lost the address." So begins Martyn Burke's tragi-comic novel of love and war. Danny, a Canadian sharp-shooter, and Hank, in the US Army, have been stationed in Kandahar, but they are in Los Angeles desperate to find the Hollywood psychic who will reveal the whereabouts of the women they love. Danny is searching for Ariana, the girl he fell in love with in Toronto in the last years of the 20th century; Hank is searching for Annie Boudreau, known in the tabloids as "Annie of the Boo Two" - twins who were briefly in the gravitational pull of Hugh Hefner. From Grenadier Pond in west end Toronto, to Afghanistan, to the Malibu colony in LA, the reader follows the lives of Danny and Hank, revealed by a masterful story teller and commentator on American culture. When in the mountains of Kandahar, Danny and Hank torture the members of al Qaeda and the Taliban with the piano music and a larger-than-life-size cardboard reproduction of Liberace in satin short shorts, high-kicking as if on Broadway.

Martyn Burke knows war-riddled Afghanistan, where he has filmed documentaries. He knows Los Angeles where he lives. And he knows of families similar to Ariana's because of his second home in multi-cultural Toronto. In 2012, the feature documentary Under Fire: Jour­nalists In Combat, which he wrote and directed, was short-listed for an Academy Award, and won a 2012 Peabody Award.