22 July 2024

A Mid-Century Modern Country House Mystery


Harsh Evidence
Pamela Fry
London: Wingate, 1953
172 pages

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 goneit 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. 

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06 July 2024

My Sixth and Final Canadian Book of Lists List: The Top 10 Things I Learned Through Reading and Researching the Canadian Book of Lists



THE TOP TEN THINGS I LEARNED THROUGH READING AND RESEARCHING THE CANADIAN BOOK OF LISTS

1. At time of composition, David Ondaatje was a student at Lakefield College School, an institution that  features in CANADA'S 10 BEST INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS FOR BOYS*. Whether its position,  #6,  is a reflection of Messer Ondaatje's feelings toward his school is unknown.

Like David Ondaatje, I was at the time a teenage schoolboy, albeit in the plebeian public system. I remember much being made about Prince Andrew attending Lakefield. Low and behold, the book includes this uncredited, poorly reproduced photo.


2. David Ondaatje is the son of Sir Christopher Ondaatje.

3. Sir Christopher Ondaatje was the president of Pagurian Press, publisher of the book.

4. In 1979, the year after Pagurian published The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists, Sir Christopher teamed up with son David's writing partner Jeremy Brown to cobble together Pagurian's The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Sex and Adventure.

5. "K-K-K-Katy" was written by Geoffrey O'Hara who, like Arthur Stringer, was a Chatham boy. 


Reading up on the song's history, I learned that in the 'twenties it had been appropriated by the Women of the Ku Klux with "K-K-K-Klanswomen."

My introduction to the song came through the folk group the Brother-in-Law.

My parents had all their albums, including The Brother-in-Law Strike Again! (1966), which features "K-K-K-Klansmen":


The Women of the Ku Klux Klan would not have been pleased.

6. In 1978 Rush was the best Canadian rock group.

Who knew!

The Band having disbanded the previous year, I would've thought it was either Teenage Head or Pointed Sticks, but THE 10 BEST CANADIAN ROCK GROUPS set me right. The list comes from Ron Scribner, President of Music Shoppe Agency. He places Heart, a group consisting entirely of Americans, at #2. Scribner's list of the THE 10 BEST MALE AND FEMALE CANADIAN VOCALISTS has Dan Hill in top spot and misspells Murray McLauchlan's name.

7. Leonard Cohen was a non-entity. He doesn't appear once in the book's 391 pages, nor does Tommy Douglas. Michael Ondaatje, David Ondaatje's uncle, is also absent.

8. Mary Anne Shadd does not feature, nor does Josiah Henson. Black Canadian history is ignored completely, and is similarly ignored in every review.

9. Kateri Tekawitha, Joseph Brant, Pauline Johnson, Francis Pegahmagabow, and Chief Dan George do not feature.

10. Before reading the Canadian Book of Lists, this Montrealer was forever pushing back against the claim that Toronto thinks itself "the centre of the universe." Now, I'm now not so sure.

* "Member schools of the Canadian Headmaster's Association only."

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05 July 2024

My Fourth and Fifth Canadian Book of Lists Lists: It's a Man's World... an English Man's World


Being the fifth post on

Susanna Moodie surrounded by men seems an appropriate image. The Canadian Book of Lists begins with 10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON CANADIANS. She is the first woman quoted, though her words are attributed to "Susanna Moddie":


That Mrs Moodie is one of two women on this list is a bit unusual; she's usually her own. In David Crombie's 10 CANADIANS TO INVITE TO DINNER TO UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF CANADA AND ITS ROOTS the poor woman is made to share a table with Gabriel Dumont, John A. Macdonald, J.S. Woodsworth, Gilles Vigneault, William Van Horne, Stephen Leacock, John Diefenbaker, Ralph Allen, and André Lauredeau.

She is the only woman to appear on this list of my own making:

THE 10 MOST QUOTED CANADIANS IN
THE CANADIAN BOOK OF LISTS
1.   ROBERTSON DAVIES
2.   PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU
3.   JOHN DIEFENBAKER
4.   WILFRID LAURIER
5.   RENÉ LÉVESQUE
6.   JOHN A. MACDONALD
7.   STEPHEN LEACOCK
8.   HUGH MACLENNAN
9.   THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON
10. SUSANNA MOODIE
It's skewed in that Trudeau, Diefenbaker, Laurier, and Macdonald were each accorded 10 GREATEST QUOTES lists. The Quebec premier has a similar list, but it is theme-driven: " THE 10 BEST QUOTES ON SEPARATISM BY RENE LÉVÉSQUE [sic]."

As noted yesterday, nineteen women rank amongst the 115 Canadian Book of Lists contributors. They far outnumber the three francophones:
  • André Bardet of Montreal's Chez Bardet contributes his recipe for Chicken Supreme (though I have my doubts that that is what he called it). I wonder whether the chef knew it would end up in fourth place, after Joe Batt's Arm Fish Casserole, in an unattributed list titled THE 10 BEST CANADIAN RECIPES.
  • As "Mme. Jehane Benoit," Jehane Benoît's contribution Grace de rôti, a recipe lifted from her 1970 The Canadiana Cookbook. Like the Canadian Book of Lists,  it is a Pagurian Press publication. both were published in paperback by Signet.   

  • The third and last francophone contributor is the great Mark Lalonde. Every one of his contributions is pulled from A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada, 1974), which was published when he was Minister of Health and Welfare.
 

I wonder whether any of the three were actually asked to contribute to this project?

In a 18 November 1978 piece for the Star-Phoenix by Nancy Russell, author Jerry Brown defends his work from those who label it "the Toronto book of lists": 


And so, today this Quebecer presents a second list:

TEN LISTS THAT FEATURE NO FRANCOPHONES

1.    10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON FRENCH CANADA
          AND FRENCH  CANADIANS
2.    10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON CANADA
3.    10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON CANADIANS
4.    THE 5 GREATEST CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON
          NATIONALISM AND NATIONALITY
5.    10 GREAT CANADIAN SPORTS ACHIEVERS
6.    THE 10 MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN CANADA
7.    THE 10 BEST CANADIAN BOOKS
8.    THE TEN BEST CANADIAN CHILDREN'S BOOKS
9.    THE 10 BEST CANADIAN ROCK GROUPS
10.  10 GREAT CANADIAN QUOTATIONS ON LOVE

04 July 2024

My Third Canadian Book of Lists List: The 10 Biggest Contributors (Featuring Clare Wallace!)


The greatest contributor is the taxpayer. Statistics Canada alone accounts for over ten percent of the lists. Authors Jeremy Brown and David Ondaatje also mine Government of Canada publications, which is not to suggest they don't come up with some of their own. After 391 pages, I'm left with the impression that the pair collaborated on the unattributed lists, but can't be sure. Several lists are credited to Brown alone. Ondaatje is credited with only one, THE LONGEST 10 IN CANADA, which isn't nearly as filthy as the title suggests. If don't already know the longest serving prime minister, this is the list for you.

Jeremy Brown and David Ondaatje are just two of the 115 contributors to the list. David's dad, Sir Christopher Ondaatje, is another, as were several employees of Loewen, Ondaatje, McCutcheon & Company Ltd.

THE 10 BIGGEST CONTRIBUTORS TO THE CANADIAN BOOK OF LISTS

1. DAVID SCOTT-ATKINSON, "Public Relations Executive and Canadian Trend Observer." Scott-Atkinson's name meant nothing to me. Reading the 2004 obituary his family posted in the Globe and Mail, it seems I really missed something. His lists add much needed humour and creativity. 

2. SID ADILMAN, "Entertainment Columnist, The Toronto Star," who just happens to have co-authored a book with Jeremy Brown.

3. JEREMY BROWN, "Author, Dining Out in Toronto." Brown is identified repeatedly as as the author of Dining Out in Toronto (Edmonton: Greywood, 1971), a book he wrote with Sid Adilman, and not as co-author of The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists. One wonders why.

4. HENRY ROXBOROUGH, "Author, Great Days in Canadian Sport." Sports historian Roxborough wrote four books, including Canada at the Olympics (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1975), so it seems odd that the one referenced is his very first, then over two decades old.

Toronto: Ryerson, 1957

5. DR. DANIEL CAPPON, "Professor of Environmental Studies, York University." Cappon began his academic career at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and is credited for helping to establish the Department of Environmental Studies at York. He is remembered today for his views on homosexuality, most concisely expressed in this 10 January 1973 Toronto Star opinion piece:

cliquez pour agrandir

Interestingly, not one of the doctor's lists touch upon homosexuality or the environment, though he does have something to say about menopause.

6. GEOFFREY P. JOYNER, "Director, Sotheby Parke Barnet (Canada), Limited." As might be expected, the authors lean heavily on Mr Joyner in the Art and the Arts section of their book.

7. DESMOND MORTON, "Dean of Humanities and Academic, Vice-Principle, Erindale College, University of Toronto." A bit of a surprise to me in that I did not expect to see someone like Morton contributing to so shoddy a book. On the other hand, how was he to know it would be shoddy? His lists, which deal with War and Politics, are the longest and most considered.

8. NICHOLAS VAN DAALEN, "Author, The International Tennis Guide and The International Golf Guide." Contributions include THE 10 BEST TENNIS RESORTS IN CANADA, THE 10 BEST PUBLIC GOLF COURSES IN CANADA, and THE 10 BEST PRIVATE GOLF COURSES IN CANADA, amongst others. The International Tennis Guide (1976) and The International Golf Guide (1976) were both published by Pagurian Press, the original publisher of the Canadian Book of Lists. Pagurian later issued van Daalen's Complete Book of Movie Lists (1979).

9. BERNDT BERGLUND, "Author, Wilderness Survival." Another Pagurian Press author, which is not to suggest that I haven't committed THE 10 MOST POISONOUS PLANTS IN CANADA to memory.

10. CLAIRE WALLACE, "Canadian Etiquette." I have Miss Wallace to thank in knowing how to address not only a duke's younger son's elder son but a duke's elder son's elder son. She has spared me much embarrassment. 

The sharp-eyed will have noticed that Claire Wallace is the only woman to appear in the top ten. This will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the book. One hundred and fifteen people contributed to The First Original Unexpurgated Authentic Canadian Book of Lists, nineteen of whom were women. There'll be more on this imbalance in tomorrow's post. 

Until then, for those interested, "diminutive ex-mayor David Crombie" contributed just one list: 10 CANADIANS TO INVITE TO DINNER TO UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF CANADA AND ITS ROOTS. Gabriel Dumont leads a list that includes only one woman.

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