The Stone Cottage Mystery Joyce Boyle Toronto: Macmillan, 1961 151 pages
A big city girl made unhappy by her family's move to a small town, sixteen-year-old Isobel Anderson will be a familiar figure to readers of children's fiction. In her case, the big city is Toronto; the small town is Farston, to which Isabel's father (occupation unknown) has been transferred.
Coinciding with Farston High School's Christmas break, the Andersons' arrival is soon followed by a different sort of break. One particularly blowy, snowy day, Isobel is out on a solitary a walk when she falls and does something to her foot. Isobel tries to make for home, but the pain is too great. It's all she can do to reach the nearest dwelling, an old stone cottage that sits high on the hill at the end of her road. No one responds to her knocking, but she finds the door unlocked. And that is where she is found sometime later by young Eleanor Morgan. The girl lights a fire, makes sure Isobel is comfortable, and then sets off to get help. This arrives in in the form of a sleigh driven by Doctor Gordon Brown – "I'm Doctor Gordon Brown" – who then whisks her off to hospital where "several small foot bones" are found to be broken.
Forget the foot, this mystery concerns a stone cottage. Built by Eleanor's great-great-great grandfather, the building is now owned by the town, which has handed it over as the meeting place of the Farnston High School Historical Club.
Two observations:
at my high school, clubs met in the school itself;
there was always a teacher present, which is never the case here.
Before you get all hot and bothered about underage drinking, drugs, and sex, let me assure you that the students of Farston High are all good kids. They welcome Isobel with great warmth, going so far as to enlisting the help of Norwegian immigrant Nels Olsen in building an elaborate sled so that she can participate in the school's Valentine skating party.
Isobel's date, Eleanor's brother John, proves a true gentleman:
"Good time?" he asked. "Never better," was Isobel's answer. "Oh, John, it was a perfect evening! And all I can say is 'Thank you'!" "That's all you need to say," was John's reply. "Thats all you need to say when you use that tone of voice."
And off he goes home.
The Edmonton Journal, 10 September 1958
The students of Farston High School are an extremely wholesome and cheery lot, which is not to say that there isn't tension within their midst. Understanding the source is dependent one's knowledge of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Eleanor's great-great-grandfather, Alan Donaldson, a supporter of reform, was falsely accused of being a rebel. Facing arrest, he fled to the United States and was never seen again. A box of money and papers entrusted to his care disappeared at the same time. Eleanor's great-great-grandmother was certain that her husband had hidden the box, but the Farr family is convinced that he stole it.
As expected, Isobel, Eleanor, and their schoolmates solve the mystery of the missing money and papers. That they do this with the assistance of Miss Malcolm (Isobel's Toronto history teacher), Miss Norman (Isobel's Farston history teacher), and Miss Fleming (the town librarian), raised a smile because Joyce Boyle herself was a teacher and librarian.
Object and Access: First published in 1958 by Macmillan of Canada. Unlike Joyce Boyle's previous novel, Muskoka Holiday (1953), it was not published in the United Kingdom or the United States; something to do with the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, I expect. My copy, a second printing in olive green hardcover with mustard printing, was purchased last year at my favourite local charity shop. Sadly, it lacks the dust jacket, but what do you want for 65 cents.
As I write, just two copies of The Stone Cottage Mystery are being sold online, both published in 1969 by Macmillan. At US$13.00, the more attractive is a hardcover with dust jacket. The other bookseller offers a paperback copy for US$68.00:
Tolerable Levels of Violence Robert G. Collins Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983 241 pages
Four years ago, while driving home from a grocery run in Kemptville, Ontario, I happened to tune into North Country Public Radio, Canton, New York... then pulled onto the shoulder of County Road 43 and phoned my wife.
The station was broadcasting a live report of a violent assault on the American Capitol.
Two weeks ago, the man behind that failed insurrection was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. On the very same day that felon, who treats his oaths of office as he has his marriage vows, pardoned men and women who had assaulted police officers. The Capitol Police stood by their oaths; had they turned away, it is entirely possible that Members of Congress, Senators, and the Vice-President would have been killed that day.
Senator Josh Hawley, who'd urged on the insurrectionists, ran for his life like a little boy as Officer Daniel Hodges served to protect him.
Of all I saw on 6 January, 2021, this is the footage that most haunts:
Paul Williams lookalike Patrick McCaughey III is one of the insurrectionists who very nearly killed Officer Hodges.
Judge Trevor N. McFadden, a Trump appointee, found McCaughey guilty of:
three counts of aiding or abetting or assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers, including one involving a dangerous weapon;
one count of obstruction of an official proceeding;
one count of interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder;
one count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon;
one count of engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon;
disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building;
committing an act of violence in the Capitol Building or grounds.
On April 14, 2023, McCaughey received a seven year and six month sentence. The felon apologized to the police officers, adding that he was unworthy of the rights he'd once enjoyed.
On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump restored those rights by pardoning McCaughey and more than 1500 other tried and convicted insurrectionists.
Tolerable Levels of Violence takes place over a period of several days in the summer of 1999. The setting is not far from where I live in the Ottawa Valley. John Cobbett, professor of English at National University ("what had been known as the University of Ottawa"), is burying the body of a man who'd managed to elude his family's security system. The intruder's head was blown off by Anne, John's pregnant wife, who'd walked in on the attempted rape of her nine-year-old son. Care is taken in disposing of the body; the dead man's friends will soon come looking.
John and Anne's mornings begin with CBC reports of violence forecasts:
It will be another day at least before public transportation begins again
and schools and theatres reopen. The National Capital Region computer forecast
for today remains at Unacceptable Levels of Violence. But we're only one point
below that red line, and I think we can promise our audience a socially active
day tomorrow... and probably for a few days after that, with Tolerable Levels
of Violence for the rest of the week.
This optimism counters the trend. Economic crisis and declining living stands have spurred violence and lawlessness, bringing an end to parliamentary democracy. Canada and the United States have been in decline for well over a decade. Their combined populations – no one pays much attention to the border anymore – is officially 120 million, with a further 35 million roaming the continent grabbing what they can and doing what they want.
When conditions are deemed tolerable, John commutes to Ottawa as the as part of an armed convoy. He's as dedicated to his profession as he is to securing the family home. When possible, he works on his latest essay: "Moral Illusions in Renaissance Literature." Anne what she can to contribute to the household income by writing optimistic children's books featuring young brothers named Tony and Toby.
The Cobbett family lives in Braeside, an unfortified hamlet roughly fifty-six kilometres west of what was once Parliament Hill. The church is a ruin, as is its gas station; most neighboring homes are burnt out shells.
In his 10 December 1983 Globe & Mail review, published three weeks to the day before 1984, William French writes:
The chilling message of this futuristic novel is that Orwell and the other doomsayers were wrong in predictions of man's fate. It's not the tyranny of totalitarian governments we have to fear, or the prospect of nuclear wasteland, but merely the escalation of the kind of random violence and terrorism that are already established throughout the world.
I was a young pup at the time, steeped in the music of Bertolt Brecht, Pete Seeger, Neil Young, Gang of Four, the Mekons, and Heaven 17.
I'd read George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, John Stewart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, and watched SCTV religiously. Even then I knew that William French, for whom I have great respect, was all wrong; totalitarianism, random violence. and terrorism are an unholy trinity, as evidenced by Trump's release of Enrique Tarrio, Stewart Rhodes, and even so insignificant a figure as Patrick McCaughey III.
This past Sunday, after another grocery run, this time to Brockville, Ontario, I looked across the St Lawrence to Morristown, New York. You could see its scattered houses quite clearly, not two kilometres across the water. Morristown was so close that I could make out the green letters on the water tower.
I hope to visit the United States again in 2029.
I have no idea what to expect.
About the author: The jacket provides scant detail – "Robert G. Collins is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. This is his first novel." – but there is a photo.
Robert George Collins (1926-2010) was born in Danbury, Connecticut. He served in the US Navy and was a veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War. After service, he emigrated to Canada where he taught at the University of Manitoba and the University of Ottawa. Tolerable Levels of Violence was his only novel. This obituary has more.
Object and Access: A deceptively slim hardcover bound in off-white boards, anyone familiar with much-missed publisher Lester & Orpen Dennys and its much-missed International Fiction List will remember the format. Tolerable Levels of Violence was #16 in the series, sandwiched between D.M. Thomas's Ararat and Childhood by Jona Oberski.
Though there was no second printing of the Lester & Orpen Dennys edition, the novel enjoyed a second life in 1985 as a Totem paperback.
I rolled my eyes at the cover, but I now see that it is faithful to the novel. The Cobbetts do indeed live in something that looks like a Confederate plantation house. I don't know whether it is based on an actual residence, but do recognize that Braeside has some unusual dwellings, the old Usborne residence being a prime example. My only complaint is that the motorcycle should be purple.
Totem copies are the least expensive with online prices beginning at US$8.99. The Lester & Orpen Dennys begins at US$15.00. Nothing appears to be in particularly good condition. My copy was purchased last autumn at London's Attic Books. Price: $7.50.
To those who live in Braeside today, I'm sad to report the your local public library does not hold a copy, even though the old library building features in the novel.
The Jameson Girls Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant] Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott, 1956 240 pages
King Jameson is dying and his daughters have gathered for the occasion. Isobel has flown in from New York, where she lives with third husband Eric. Mildred too lives in New York, but with her first husband. She arrived by train.
Isobel and Mildred don't talk.
Fanny, the eldest sister, didn't have travel at all; she lives at the family home with Lily, the fourth and youngest Jameson girl. Meanwhile, King lies semi-coherent in an upstairs bedroom facing framed photographs of his two dead wives.
Hawkrest is a grand house located on a wooded crag overlooking the Niagara River. King bought it not long after the Great War, then moved his family from New York. Before the war, the Jamesons had lived in Chicago, in which King's British immigrant parents had settled.
Hawkrest was ideal for King's burgeoning business as a rumrunner. As the years passed, he began pretending that the house had been in the family for generations. King would point to its antique furnishings, collected by the former owner, describing them as objects ancestral.
The true Jameson family history is slowly revealed. The most solacious details belong to King and his second wife, though Isabel and her many marriages provide competition. In stark contrast, Fanny, the eldest Jameson girl, settled into contented spinsterhood as a child. Mildred, the third Jameson girl, obsesses over marital fidelity, while Lily...
Well, what of Lily? The baby of the family, she's the daughter of King's sexy second wife Hazel, who died behind the wheel. Lily was in the passenger seat. She barely survived and hasn't been "right" since.
The Jameson Girls is backward looking, with the real drama existing only in memory. The reader has arrived too late, and so relies on fleeting references to past events. The present, lighter and more comical, takes place under a gathering cloud. It has two stars, the most recent being American Theodore Fairfield, who is summering in the mansion-cum-B&B across the road. A bigamist gold digger who presents himself as a son of Boston's well-to-do, he sets his sites first on Fanny, then quickly shifts to Lily. She's so pretty, so doll like, so innocent, so malleable, he's afraid he's falling in love.
The second star is Mrs Pringle, who has taken offense in being referenced as "the maid" by King Jameson's night nurse. She is not "the maid," rather "a family friend" who just happens to have taken care of the house daily, for pay, these past thirty or so years. Fanny is so fearful the insulted, indignant Mrs Pringle will leave that she has taken over most housekeeping duties.
It's not all light, of course. Let's remember there is a man dying upstairs. Of this, Mrs Pringle is well aware:
In a burst of optimism on Saturday she had bought a black hat for the funeral: I hope I haven’t gone and wasted my good money, she thought as she ran water into the sink.
Like most Kirkus reviews, its take on The Jameson Girls (1 September 1956) is very short, yet somehow manages to give away too much. I'll share only the final sentence: "For women only, a more credible than charitable chronicle - and this prying, gossipping [sic], niggling world has its authenticity as well as human curiosity."
My interest in this quote relates to an ongoing discussion with friends regarding the "target audience," and how zeroing in on a specific reader, invariably the one most likely to purchase, can alienate others.
Canadian Forum, December 1956
Nelson, Foster and Scott's promotion was gender neutral. Would the Kirkus "For women only" have brought more sales?
Who knows?
What I can say for certain is that this man is all in on a prying, gossiping, niggling world that has authenticity and human curiosity.
You will be, too.
Not quite a bloomer: This passage, in which Fanny reacts to the revelation that sister Isobel, twice divorced, is having an affair, gives some idea of Jan Hilliard's talent:
The critics rave: For all my searching, I've yet to find an unfavourable review of any Jan Hilliard novel. Vancouver Sun critic Elmore Philpott champions The Jameson Girls in his 4 January 1954 review: "It is a witty, genial, sparking satire about the three daughters of the ex-king of the Niagara river rum runners [emphasis mine]."
Did he read it?
Object and Access: One of just two Nelson, Foster & Scott titles in my collection, the other being Jan Hilliard's A View of the Town (1954), The Jameson Girls is a solid hardcover with brown boards and uncredited jacket illustration. All evidence suggests that it was a split-run with Abelard-Schulman, printed and bound in England. Neither edition was reprinted.
There has never been another.
As I write, one copy of the Nelson, Foster & Scott edition is listed online at US$19.00.
In very good condition with dust jacket, it's a steal at twice the price.
Of the eighteen Gilbert Parker screen adaptations, The Money Master is the only one to be undertaken by the author himself. In his filmography, it follows closely behind Behold My Wife! (1920), a George Melford production based on the author's 1893 bestseller The Translation of a Savage.
That Behold My Wife! was Hollywood's second adaptation of the novel in seven years speaks to the author's popularity. A third adaptation followed.
But this post is about The Money Master... or not. The advertisement at the top of this post comes from an advert Paramount placed in the March 1921 edition of Motion Picture News.
Look for the asterisk.
cliquez pour agrandir
This was three months from release and still there'd been no decision as to the title. The film premiered on 26 June 1921 as A Wise Fool. Though it is preserved in the Library of Congress, I see no evidence that there has been a screening within living memory. What little I know of A Wise Fool comes through publicity shots and reviews, the former being surprisingly uncommon.
The image above, from the August 1921 edition of Exhibitors Herald, features Carmen Barbille (Alice Hollister) serenading her daughter Zoé (Ann Forrest), suggests one difference between A Wise Fool and its source; in the novel, Carmine last sees Zoé as a young girl.
Apologies for the the spoiler.
Anyone considering The Money Master as an autumn read is advised to skip the rest of this post as I'll be comparing the plots of novel and film.
The Money Maker concerns Jean Jacques Barbille, the fortunate heir to generations of wealth grown in rural Quebec. He takes some of those riches to Paris, where he is not recognized as the man of importance he believes himself to be. As noted in last week's review, his reception outside the French capitol meets expectations, though this is to do with capital (apologies, again). On his return voyage aboard the Antoine, Jean Jacques meets the beautiful Carmen Delores and her ne'er-do-well father. The two are fleeing Spain on account of papa Sebastian backing the losing side in Spain's recent civil conflict. The Antoine strikes a submerged iceberg off the shore of Gaspé. Jean Jacques is rescued by Carmen and the two marry.
Flash forward thirteen years. Jean Jacques lives at the family home, Manor Cartier in the parish of St. Saviour's, with Carmen and their little girl Zoé. A happy soul, his passion for business has come to consume and he is taking family life for granted.
No, that's unfair. Jean Jacques dotes on Zoé, who loves him so much.
But what of Carmen?
Mme Barbille has been sneaking around with master carpenter George Masson, whom M Barbille had hired to construct a flume. Once the project is completed, the lovers plan to flee the parish.
George and Carmen as imagined by illustrator André Castaigne.
Jean Jacques discovers his wife's infidelity and confronts George. He has the perfect opportunity to murder his wife's lover, but does not.
I won't go into their exchange except to say that it is the very best part of the novel.
George jilts Carmen. Though Jean Jacques forgives his wife, she disappears, leaving her daughter behind.
We flash forward again, this time to Jean Jacques' fiftieth birthday, where he realizes that Zoé has fallen in love with Gerard Fynes:
He was English – that was a misfortune; he was an actor – that was a greater
misfortune, for it suggested vagabondage of morals as well as of profession; and he was a Protestant,
which was the greatest misfortune of all.
Faced with Jean Jacques' disproval, the two elope. It's now Zoé's turn to disappear.
Jean Jacques goes into a complete tailspin. The modest growth of his inherited wealth is reversed. The decline is hastened by his thieving father-in-law, a dishonest cousin, and a fire that destroys his flour mill. Rather than declare bankruptcy or accept financial aid from the widowed Virginie Poucette, he allows creditors to move in. All Jean Jacques manages to save for himself is a bird cage that had belonged to Carmen and Zoé's pet canary. With nothing to anchor him to St Saviour's, Jean Jacques leaves for Montreal where – quite by chance – he encounters Carmen on her deathbed. In her last moments, they reconcile. Our hero then sets out for the Canadian west, where there had once been a sighting of Zoé and her husband.
Because this synopsis is taking far too long, I won't go into Jean Jacques' attempted murder of Carmen's last lover, and will instead cut to the discovery that he has a granddaughter. The Protestant actor father is dead, Zoé died shortly after childbirth, and the baby is now with a wealthy woman who'd been unable to conceive.
I won't go into their exchange except to say that it is the very worst part of the novel.
For reasons both unclear and unconvincing, Jean Jacques leaves his granddaughter, never to see her again. He marries Virginie Poucette and lives his remaining years on three
hundred and twenty acres of land "near the Rockies" he'd bought for Zoé decades earlier.
I realize that was long. In rushing through the ending I kept pace with the novel.
The comparison with A Wise Fool will be much shorter because I haven't seen it – who has? – and so rely on century-old reviews. The most detailed, found in the 3 June 1921 edition of Variety, suggests that the film followed the plot of the novel quite closely up to the point at which Jean Jacques loses his fortune. This includes a scene in which he destroys the guitar left behind by the absent Carmen.
James Kirkwood as Jean Jacques Barbille.
As in the novel, after losing his wife, his daughter, his livelihood, and his possessions, Jean Jacques becomes something of a wanderer, his only companion being the caged canary.
Had Parker read McTeague?
The Variety reviewer was none too impressed, summing up all that follows in just two sentences:
In The Money Master, Jean Jacques comes upon Carmen in a hovel, not a nunnery. She dies within the hour. For all his years of searching, the desperate father never sees his daughter again. Zoé cannot return to him because she is dead. Her husband Gerald died a pauper. Their child is raised by a wealthy woman who refuses to let Jean Jacques so much as touch his granddaughter.
For the film, Parker cut the three deaths and the very existence of Zoé and Gerald's daughter.
Would that we could see that film! I'm curious as to its depiction of life in rural Quebec, much praised in by American critics, and the character Virginie Poucette. Played by Californian Truly Shattuck, the Canadien isn't mentioned in so much as one review I've found.
Should be be concerned about Virginie?
Gilbert Parker knew what he was doing. As early as 1921, he recognized the Hollywood Ending.
Because this is a Canadian country house mystery, the house isn't terribly old and servants not so numerous. Rocky Crest is located on a private island in a lake somewhere in Northern Ontario. Belonging to wealthy Toronto businessman J.H. Charleston, it is a two-storey mid-century modern, complete with floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows and – here I assume – Danish furniture.
J.H. has invited employees and their spouses for a relaxing weekend, though no one is at all relaxed. Guests include:
Randy Matthews, the top copywriter with Charleston & Synge Advertising. He's here with wife Ann, who worries that his time at the company is limited.
Iris Martin, dress designer, owns a Bloor Street shop in which J.H. has chosen to invest. She is the latest in in Randy's "long string of entanglements."
Peter Fairweather, a commercial artist working within the Charleston business empire, has brought his wife Lois, "a small, bird-like woman in her mid-thirties."
Gordon Goodman, an accounts executive with Charleston & Co is also present, with his wife, "that silly Marion," in tow.
And then there's protagonist Beth Manley. The daughter of a "Toronto University" professor who died far too young, she's the editor of Glitter, J.H.'s latest and most ambitious publishing venture. Unlike the others, this is her first visit to Rocky Crest. Very much outside her element, she's found a friend in Ann, who warns against "Charlestonitis":
"New arrivals to Rocky Crest are particularly susceptible. First symptoms are a dampness in the palms and an irresistible urge to say 'Yes' every time J.H. opens his mouth."
A cautious soul who is very much outside her comfort zone, Beth is made more tense upon learning that her former lover, journalist Paul Manning, is due to arrive.
She awaits Paul's arrival, just was the reader awaits the discovery of the dead body described in the italicized first paragraph:
In time she would be found—but not yet. The shock and terror of her discovery were still to come. Now she floated peacefully at the edge of the island, the spreading web of blonde hair framing her clear, pale face, the wet green silk of her dress clinging to breast and thigh. Her ballerina slippers were gone—it had been easy for the water to pull them away. And as the small waves lapped her cheeks, her head moved as though she turned it in her sleep. But she was not sleeping.
It's Beth who finds the body. She'd given liquor to steady herself as things begin spinning out of control.
De döda talar ej [Harsh Evidence] 1956
Harris, Charleston's handyman, fishes the lady from the lake. He takes the body to the toolshed, which everyone somehow agrees is appropriate, and then sets out for the mainland and the police. His departure is followed by a sudden storm, leading all to wonder if he'll be coming back at all.
But, look, a boat!
It's not Harris, nor the police, rather late arrival Paul:
Marion flung herself upon him. "Paul, darling! We're so glad to see you! We've had the most dreadful time!
Harsh Evidence may be a Canadian country house mystery, but the characters speak like proper Brits.
Marion's slobbering excitement at Paul's arrival is tempered somewhat by J.H., who tells the journalist about the drowned woman. No sooner has his story ended than Marion stumbles upon a heart-shaped locket in the grass. It would appear to have fallen while Harris was carrying the body to the toolshed. Paul inspects it and turns a whiter shade of pale:
"I think she was my wife."
Turns out he's right.
Beth had no idea that Paul was once wed. When the two are alone, he relates a sad, sordid story of love and betrayal... and then it's off to dress for dinner!
The women go all out. Ann dons on a white dinner dress that possesses "a rakish charm," Lois engulfs herself in yards of grey velvet topped by a little pearl cap, and Iris has "poured herself into a strapless dress which appeared to be made of black sequins." You'd think the dress designer would have the advantage, but it's Beth who makes the biggest splash:
Gentlemen! Lady! I remind you that this very afternoon a woman, Paul's ex-wife Lizette, was found dead floating not far from this very house. Beth, you were the one who found her. Randy, Gordon, you walked down to the shoreline to help retrieve the body.
The 26 September 1953 Globe and Mail review features some backhanded praise:
I didn't think much of J.H.'s guests, Beth included, but these intolerable four-flushing types are what makes Harsh Evidence worth reading. Careerists all, we dodge them in life, but are drawn to them in print.
All enjoy a perfectly lovely dinner, after which Peter tinkles the ivories and Iris does a substandard Dietrich imitation. The host waltzes with Lois in all her velvet, then suggests a game of Kidnapped.
Kidnapped?
Kidnapped is one of Randy's creations. It's something like Hide and Go Seek, but with teams and rhyming clues.
What fun! But how strange.
The novel's great flaw lies in the callous and peculiarly uniform behaviour by a group of people who had mere hours earlier witnessed Harris retrieve of the body of a dead woman. Some of this may be explained away by the slow reveal that Paul was not the only member of the party to have, let's say, known Lizette.
Kuolleet eivät puhu [Harsh Evidence] 1957
It's not often that I share a spoiler. I do so here because Harsh Evidence is unique in Canadian mystery writing of the time.
As the novel's mid-point approaches, Ann tells tells Beth about Iris's tragic history. The father was disinherited for marrying a chorus girl, Iris's mother. After losing what remained of his money in the crash of '29, he took a drive out a window. J.H., a friend of the family, paid for an exclusive girls' boarding school from which Iris was subsequently expelled. It's only in recent years that the two resumed cordial relations:
"It's certainly romantic," Beth said. "Positively Victorian. Somehow it doesn't fit Iris." "There are a lot of things about Iris that don't fit," Ann said slowly. "Oh? What, for example?" "Well, the men she collects – considering how hard she works at being a glamour girl – they're a pretty queer bunch."
I identified the last sentence as a bloomer, but the final chapters led me to reconsider. By this point, the reader has come to see Lizette Manning (née Lily Roberts) for what she was, a femme fatale who had mined men for money and sex. The twist comes when it is revealed that Lizette saw another mark in Iris, who confronts her on the morning of the afternoon her body would be found.
Ultimately, it's Gordon who exposes the murderer:
Interestingly, Iris herself had used sex – or the promise of sex – to get Randy to agree to a scheme involving the sale of insider information to J.H.'s competitors.
For these reasons alone, Harsh Evidence is worth a careful second reading.
About the author: Following early, lazy research on Miss Fry, the newly released 1931 census provides a touch more information. Pamela Fry is recorded as the 14-year-old English-born daughter of John and Charlotte Fry. The family had emigrated to Canada in 1928. The Frys lived at 46 Spencer Avenue in Toronto, sharing the house with Edward and Freda Jones and their three daughters.
The house still stands, though you can't see much of it in this 2020 Google Maps Street View.
Object and Access: A hardcover consisting of pale green boards and post-war paper, only the dust jacket illustration renders it attractive. Credit goes to Patric O'Keeffe, about whom I know very little.
The novel can be found at Library and Archives Canada, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, the University of Toronto, McMaster University, New York University, Occidental University, Trinity College Dublin and, most remarkably, the Atmore Public Library in Atmore, Alabama.
Here's to the Atmore Public Library!
I purchased my copy earlier this year from a UK bookseller. Price: £7.50. As I write, one copy of the Wingate edition is listed at the very same price I paid. Though lacking the jacket, it seems a good buy.
In 1956, New York's Roy Publishers published the first and only American edition. I've never seen a copy.
Harsh Evidence has enjoyed two translations, the first being the Swedish De döda tala ej (1956). This was followed by a Finnish translation titled Kuolleet eivät puhu (1957). Neither cover depicts a scene that features in the novel. Ditto the frocks.
Harsh Evidence has never been published in Canada.
Morgan's Castle Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant] New York: Abelard & Schulman, 1964 188 pages
An uncredited dust jacket of mysterious design, whatever does it mean? The rear image provides no clue.
The covers of Jan Hilliard's other novels are much more straight-forward. Consider this:
A View of the Town, is "A NOVEL OF SMALL TOWN LIFE IN NOVA SCOTIA," as are most of her novels. Morgan's Castle stands with The Jameson Girls and Dove Cottageas one of three set outside her home province. The Jameson Girls and Dove Cottage are darker than her Nova Scotia novels, while Morgan's Castle is the darkest by far. This is not to suggest that the humour, which runs through all her fiction, is entirely black.
Jan Hilliard's career as a novelist lasted just ten years. One wonders why it wasn't longer. Her novels garnered uniformly positive reviews – I've yet to find an exception – yet Morgan's Castle is the only one to have been reissued in paperback. "A spellbinding novel of romance and suspense in the Du Maurier [sic] tradition," the tagline reads. I was reminded more of Muriel Spark and Margaret Millar, but this may be because I'm more familiar with their respective works.
The heroine of Morgan's Castle is Laura Dean. The youngest member of the Dean family, she lives with her widowed artist father Sidney in a ramshackle house located somewhere in the countryside between lakes Ontario and Erie. Amy Scott, sister of Laura's late mother, isn't at all happy with her niece's situation. Nature can have such a bad influence on a maturing girl. And then there's Sidney, who Amy considers a "rural Dion Juan." For goodness sake, the man gets around on a bicycle!
Aunt Amy has sent Laura money for a train ticket to the town of Greenwood, where she lives and breeds spaniels. There is a husband, Uncle James, but he is as irrelevant to the story as he is to Aunt Amy. The focus of her life is Charlotte Morgan, depicted here by Reint de Jonge on the cover of the Dutch translation, Spel met de dood (Haarlem: Staarnrstad, 1966).
Charlotte may just be the most beautiful, most refined, most elegant woman in Greenwood; that she is the wealthiest is not up for debate. The widow of Robert Morgan, heir to a vast Niagara winery, she lives with her twenty-eight-year-old son Robbie and various servants at Hilltop House, known to the locals as "Morgan's Castle." It is located on a bluff above and away from the town and is described as looking something like a castle, though the artist for the Ace edition imagines it as a large Anglican church.
Aunt Amy sent her niece train fare on the pretence of wanting to give the girl a birthday party. Laura's four brothers and their wives will be there, but not the patriarch. Amy is well aware that Sidney won't be able to afford a ticket.
Because she's turning sixteen, Laura's siblings are concerned about shouldering the cost of further education. Is it not enough that their wives provide her with their castoffs? Sure, those old dresses have frayed hems and missing buttons, but Laura knows knows how to sew. They need not worry. Aunt Amy has a plan – and it has nothing to do with tuition.
Over the past year, Charlotte has taken a shining to the girl. Once so skinny and boyish, Laura is becoming a woman. This, um, development hasn't escaped Aunt Amy's attention either. She criticizes her niece's white dress as being too revealing, even though it's an old thing that once belonged to a brother's wife.
Aunt Amy's attraction to Charlotte is nuanced while Charlotte's attraction to Laura is simple. She would like the girl to marry her son Robbie, produce offspring, and secure the line of succession in the family business. Never mind the age difference, the time is right. It's almost as if the fates had brought them together. Just a few months ago, not long after Laura's last visit to Greenwood, Robbie's childless wife Phyllis died suddenly after having sprinkled arsenic, which she thought was sugar, on a bowl of strawberries.
In his 1995 anthology Investigating Women, David Skene-Melvin describes Laura as a detective.
She is not.
Laura has a handle on her ne'er-do-well father, but is nowhere near so savvy or keen-eyed when it comes to others. There's no surprise here. Despite having had to deal with Sidney's fabrication and deceit, her innocence is such that she believes these traits are unique to Sidney.
Morgan's Castle is in no way a detective novel, nor is it a mystery novel, though there are two murders (and many more in the backstory). The first murderer is obvious. The second murderer is a little less so, though one anticipates the act.
So much of what happens escapes Laura's attention. Does the girl's innocence have something to do with the rural environment Aunt Amy so disparages?
Could be.
Object: Yellow boards in an uncredited dust jacket. I've mentioned the uncredited bit before, I know, but it is relevant here because Hilliard, who worked for Abelard-Schulman, provided her own covers. The only one I have seen credited is Dove Cottage, which features this illustration by son of Scotland William McLaren:
Access: As with the author's four other novels, the first edition of Morgan's Castle enjoyed one lone printing. What sets it apart is a mass market paperback published three years later by Ace featured above, making it the biggest selling of the author's nine books.
The Toronto Star Weekly published Morgan's Castle in two parts over two issues (July 11-18, 1964). I've consulted various pals about the Ace cover, but have no definitive answer as to who should be credited with the illustration. What I can say is that it is accurate in its depiction of Laura.
As I write, two copies of the Abelard-Schulman edition are being offered online. Both ex-library copies, they're listed at US$5.06 and US$64.67. Take your pick. Two copies of the Ace edition are also listed. The cheaper, at US$7.12, has a cocked spine. The other, which "can have notes/highlighting," is being sold by Thrift Books for US$50.06.
The less said about Thrift Books the better.
Staarnrstad's aforementioned Spel met de dood was republished at some point. Judging by the dress, I'm guessing the second appeared in the 'seventies.
Miranda Jan Hilliard [Hilda Kay Grant] New York: Abelard -Schuman, 1960 247 pages
Miranda is the mother of two daughters, the younger being Rose, the narrator of this novel. Rose calls her mother Miranda, as encouraged by Miranda because Miranda would rather be taken for an older sister.
Miranda has aspirations. She married Alfie Arnold with the expectation that he would raise her above the class into which she'd been born. They are a good match – he loves her dearly, she really loves him –except that Alfie is content with living a modest life on his aunt's small Sussex farm. Miranda will have none of it. At her urging, the family is uprooted, trading Aunt Eliza's farm for a much larger one in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. The Arnolds are able to do this only with the financial assistance of a Government of Canada program designed to bring agricultural labourers to the country. This is not to suggest that Miranda herself has any intention of working herself. She had her fill during the Great War, when she's served as a Park Lane parlourmaid. Again, Miranda has aspirations:
The Arnolds spend three years in Cheswick, living in a small house on the farm of Mr and Mrs Saunders. Alfie, a cheerful soul by nature, is happier than he's ever been. Not so Miranda. In Canada, she'd expected her family would "stand out like a pearl among the stones," but the locals take no particular notice. The farming couple's warmth and friendliness, so appreciated by Alfie and the girls, only serves to irritate. One particular Sunday road trip to Grande Pré, complete with the recitation of select lines from Evangeline and an account of the Acadian Expulsion, was almost too much for Miranda to bear. And then came Mrs Saunders' offer, filled "with such enthusiasm and goodwill," to teach Miranda Canadian ways and customs:
"Why should I learn their damned customs?" Miranda demanded as soon as she got my father home. The story of Evangeline had not gone over too well with her. She suspected Mrs. Saunders was being anti-British. "What's the matter with English customs? "She was only trying to help," Alfie said in a placating voice. "Saying she'd make real Canadians out of us in no time! I never heard of anything so insulting. I didn't come to the colonies to be one of them."
Miranda avoids Mrs Saunders, but does enjoy the company Dan Murphy, District Representative of veterinary supply firm B.F. Whitney. Whether the salesman sees Miranda as a pearl among the stones is debatable, but he does drop by from time to time, always when Alfie is in the fields. Dan strokes her amour propre, but nothing more. Through the salesman, Miranda gets the idea that Alfie himself might find a district representative position with B.F. Whitney. She prods, eventually applying to the company on her husband's behalf and Alfie is quickly hired. At about the same time his Aunt Eliza kicks the washtub, leaving an inheritance of £200 (roughly $16,000 today).
"'My husband has fallen heir to his aunt's estate in Sussex,'" Rose hears Miranda tell Mrs Saunders. "She made poor old Great-aunt Eliza, who used to wear men's boots indoors and out and took her baths standing up at the sink in the scullery, sound like an offshoot of royalty."
The family relocates to Yarmouth – "which I shall call Southport" – the biggest town in Alfie's district. This raised concern in this reader, who well-remembers grade six geography class.
Southport is much more to Miranda's liking. She now lives one block from Main Street in a once grand rented house (a deal, owing to it being across the street from the jail yard), and so has frequent opportunity to show herself off. Her flapper dress is thin, and her heels too narrow to be practical, but she really cuts a figure next to the heavy coated, rubber booted fishermen's wives negotiating the slush of Main Street.
Herein lies the problem. There's not much call for veterinary supplies in an area so reliant on fishing. The land is poor and the farms hardscrabble. Alfie is miserable, casting about for customers, as his inheritance evaporates. Miranda tries to help by working part-time at Betty's Beauty Parlor, but all too quickly Alfie's position at The B.F. Whitney Company quite literally kills him.
Miranda is devastated – again, she really did love Alfie – yet has the strength to rally. She takes in roomers and increases her hours at Betty's.* The job feeds her ego. After all, who better to work in a beauty salon than the town beauty? Without Alfie to rely upon, she reveals herself as a very clever woman, adding layer after layer to her facade, never being caught out on one of her many, many fabrications.
The Calgary Herald, 11 May 1961
This is, of course, Miranda's story, but only as seen by her youngest. As she grows into womanhood, Rose gradually comes to see – and then comes to terms – with not only her mother's imperfections, but how she is perceived, fairly or not, by others.
Reviews of Miranda were without exception enthusiastic; Walter O'Hearne raved in The New York Times (16 April 1961), as did fellow Leacock winner Joan Walker in The Globe & Mail (1 July 1961). Not that any of this meant anything in the long run.
Sadly, unfairly, Miranda is yet another novel that was printed once and then never again. In this respect, it is very much a pearl among the stones.
Will a publisher please pick it up.
*The 1931 census, records the author, age 20, as working as a hairdresser
and living in a Yarmouth rooming house.
About the author:
Object and Access: A butter-coloured cloth hardcover with violet type. I'm guessing that the jacket illustration is the author's own doing, though I could be wrong.
I'm pleased to see that Yarmouth's Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Library has copies of all the author's books.
As of this writing, I see just one copy listed for sale online. Near Fine, at US$9.25, it's a steal. The seller is located in Greenwood, Nova Scotia, which I shall call Cheswick.
Canadian Authors You Should Know is a self-published book written by a man who counts himself amongst those you should know.
Is that not absurd?
It was doubly so for this reviewer because I do know David Richard Beasley.
So begins my review of Canadian Authors You Should Know, now available in the Spring edition of The Dorchester Review. Beasley's book is one of the most idiosyncratic works of CanLit scholarship I have ever read. His Canadian authors you should know number eight, of which these are the first seven:
John Richardson
Herman Whitaker
Frederick Philip Grove
Wyndham Lewis
Norman, Newton
Thomas B. Costain
Jamie Brown
The eighth is David Richard Beasley.
I knew six. Herman Whitaker (1867-1919) was new to me. A Brit, he spent spent much of his twenties in Canada before leaving in 1895 for California. The first of his three novels, The Settler, was published ten years later.
I've never considered writers just passing through Canadian, so was more interested in what Beasley had to say about Vancouver's Norman Newton (1929-2011), another author who was new to me.
Just think, all those years I'd lived on Davie Street, immersed in the literary scene, President of the Federation of BC Writers, and I'd never once heard Norman Newton's name.
And so I purchased a copy – sight unseen – of The Big Stuffed Hand of Friendship, Newton's fourth and final novel.
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1969
Black matte with a foil overlay, as an object it hasn't aged particularly well. Never mind. Look closely at the jacket and you will see this:
A writer, ghostwriter, écrivain public, literary historian and bibliophile, I'm the author of Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit (Knopf, 2003), and A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Translator, Memoirist and Pornographer (McGill-Queen's UP, 2011; shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize). I've edited over a dozen books, including The Heart Accepts It All: Selected Letters of John Glassco (Véhicule, 2013) and George Fetherling's The Writing Life: Journals 1975-2005 (McGill-Queen's UP, 2013). I currently serve as series editor for Ricochet Books and am a contributing editor for Canadian Notes & Queries. My most recent book is The Dusty Bookcase (Biblioasis, 2017), a collection of revised and expanded reviews first published here and elsewhere.
