Time has been tight, so tight that I've read no more than the front and back flaps of Jane Layhew's Rx for Murder, next up in my stroll through Canada's suppressed, ignored and forgotten writing. The author's debut, it wasn't suppressed, nor was it ignored – the novel was reviewed widely – but it is forgotten.
There may be good reason for this; the front flap doesn't describe any book I'd want to read. The most memorable thing about it is a typo – which isn't something you see every day on dust jackets.
In contrast, the back flap is unforgettable:
The 8 February 1947 edition of the Ottawa Citizen informs that the "small village" is Alert Bay, which would make the "Indian reservation [sic] whose inhabitants were only two generations removed from the days of scalping parties" that of the Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw.
The Ottawa Citizen, 7 February 1947
Jane Layhew never published another novel. Nearly everything I know about her is found in the above, though I can add that the author eventually returned to British Columbia, where she served for a time as Head Nurse of the Medical Ward at Prince George Regional Hospital. Here she is in the May 1970 issue of The Canadian Nurse, showing off her unique method for moving bedside lockers:
The last trace I've found of Jane Layhew is in an ad that lists supporters of Prince George alderman Phillis Parker (The Prince George Citizen, 13 November 1986).
There's a Jane Layhew Nursing Bursary, which is awarded annually to a worthy British Columbia nursing student.
Further digging will bring more, I expect, but as I say, time has been tight… and, to be frank, I'm not sure I care.
Arriving in bookstores as I write, books seven and eight in Véhicule's Ricochet Books series. Following visits to Niagara Falls (James Benson Nablo's The Long November) and Toronto (Hugh Garner's Waste No Tears), we're returning to Montreal with:
The Mayor of Côte St. Paul by Ronald J. Cooke, the strange story of Dave Manley, a struggling writer drawn into the world of slot-machines and rum-running by a good looking gal who wants nothing so much as to open a lingerie store in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Both work for the Mayor, a sadistic crime boss who takes pleasure in murdering people with darts.
Printed once by pre-romance Harlequin in June 1950, the Ricochet edition is the first in more than sixty-five years.
Hot Freezeby Douglas Sanderson, post-war Canada’s greatest noir novel, introduces "inquiry agent" Mike Garfin, ex-RCMP (he made the mistake of bedding a suspect's wife). In this first of three or four adventures, he's hired to figure out what exactly is going on with one of Westmount's spoiled bisexual teenaged sons.
Published in 1954, by Dodd, Mead (New York) and Reinhardt (London), then in 1955 by Popular Library (New York), this edition is the first in sixty years.
Long-time readers will recognize both titles. I first wrote here about Hot Freeze in the earliest days of 2011. The Mayor of Côte St. Paul consumed not one, not two, but three posts later that same year.
The Mayor of Côte St. Paul and Hot Freeze are available from the usual online sources, better bookstores and, of course, Véhicule itself.
I would be remiss in not recognizing the role played by Greg Shepard of Stark House Press in the Hot Freeze reissue. In recent years, Stark House has reissued six Douglas Sanderson novels, including A Dum-Dum for the President, the third – or is it fourth?– Mike Garfin thriller.
The Damned and the Destroyed Kenneth Orvis [pseud. Kenneth Lemieux] London: Dobson, 1962
How many novels begin with the protagonist being summoned to a mansion on Mount Royal? This very thing happens in Murder without Regret, the last book I read. Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of others: David Montrose's The Crime on Cote des Neiges and Hot Freeze by Douglas Sanderson. Not so The Damned and the Destroyed – here the reader has to wait for the third page. The first two set the stage: The year (unstated) is 1954. Thirty-eight-year-old Jean Drapeau (unnamed) has just been elected mayor of Montreal. His party, the Civic Action League (named), looks to close down the open city of Al Palmer's Montreal Confidential.
Private investigator Maxwell Dent is more than familiar with the city's unseemly underside, which is not to say he's of it. Straight-laced and upstanding, Dent studied law at McGill, then served in the Korean War where he took down "an enemy ring supplying narcotics to U.N. forces for the purpose of troop demoralization."
Huntley Ashton, the man whose mansion the PI visits, knows all this stuff: "I've had you checked, Dent. Screened thoroughly. I respect what I found." Ashton's due diligence is understandable. As one of the city's most respected businessmen, he has to make certain that Dent can be trusted. The case is a sensitive one. Ashton's daughter Helen has turned heroin addict, and he wants Dent to smash the drug ring:
"I know that is a big order. A huge undertaking. Nevertheless, I want the people that are selling blackmarket drugs to my daughter run out of business and jailed. I want them punished to the full."
Good Canadian that he is, Dent gives thought, then responds:
"I must ask you to bear in mind that in Canada offences against the Narcotic Act fall under the jurisdiction of the R.C.M.P. The R.C.M.P. wouldn't like your present attitude."
Despite his reservations, Dent takes the case. I'm not sure why exactly, but I think it has something to do with Ashton's love for his daughter.
"She was beautiful, young, blonde and a junkie…" reads the pitch on the Belmont paperback. The key word is "was". Helen was beautiful, or so Dent assumes, but those looks are gone by the time he sets eyes on her. Heroin has taken its toll, as it always does, and there's more: scars and weals crisscross her sunken belly, the work of a drunken abortionist.
Orvis – Lemieux, if you prefer – spent five years researching this novel. He hung with addicts and pushers, interviewed counsellors and read a mess of reports and case studies. There's a real feel of authenticity in the descriptions of his damned and destroyed: Frankie Seven, Dream Street Fay and wasted talent Phil Chasen. A classically trained concert pianist, Phil coulda been somebody, instead of a junkie, which is what he is.
Orvis handles these characters well – they appear real, and probably were – but falls flat with others. Drug kingpin Jack Moss, the "Back Man", comes off like a Bond villain. Shadow, his errand boy, is a young rapscallion who is equal parts Dondi and Oliver Twist. Inspector Welch of the RCMP is an inspector with the RCMP, and the only memorable thing about Helen's sister Thorn is her name.
Things fall apart in the second act with the shift from the first group to the second. By this point, I'd long grown tired of Dent, his outrage, his moralizing and his unwavering faith in himself. The PI is never more annoying than when he gets it in his head that he can cure Helen through tough love. He has her witness a police line-up, takes her to the trial of someone charged with possession, and forces her to visit Fay in the Fullum Street Prison:
My fingers tightened determinedly over Helen's shoulder. "Take a good look at her," I said with every ounce of firmness I could command… "Look at her face, her body. Listen to her screams, her agony. Listen and look well, because what you're seeing and hearing now is the end of the road for every addict. For everyone that thinks there's a thrill or an escape in heroin. For you – Helen Ashton!"
Lee Child is a great admirer of The Damned and the Destroyed. Should I be surprised? I don't know, I've never read Child. But a thriller should thrill, right? At the very least, it should move forward at a good pace. This one stalls. Repeatedly. When it picks up, the reader is treated to lengthy descriptions of hours spent trailing Moss and stakeouts that go on for days and days. The climax, which comes as a relief, involves a risky plan of Maxwell Dent's own design. He gets RCMP support, but keeps the details to himself. "Just issue those orders," he tells Welch. "Issue them and wait."
Three people die as a result.
I'm sure our hero would tell you that it was the best of all possible outcomes.
Pierre Desmarais, Jean Drapeau and Pacifique Plante
25 October 1954
Epigraph:
Dedication:
Coincidence: Amongst those thanked in the Acknowledgements is "Gordon W. Phillips S. Th., Consultant at the Allan Division, Royal Victoria hospital, and Chaplain Montreal prisons." A friend of the my parents, glimpses of Rev Phillips' good work is found in Adopted Derelicts, a pre-romance Harlequin written by his wife Bluebell. My father is named in the Acknowledgements of Mrs Phillips' book.
Object and Access: An unexciting 223-page hardcover in black boards with silver type. The 1962 Dobson is most likely the first, but those who follow the flag will want the McClelland & Stewart edition published that same year. An old Gazette column (29 June 1962) has McGraw-Hill publishing the novel in the States, but I've yet to see a copy. There have been two paperback editions: Digit (1964) and Belmont (1966).
Copies of The Damned and the Destroyed aren't plentiful, but they're not expensive. Those listed for sale online range in price from between £5 and US$30. I purchased mine this past June for £3.50 from a UK bookseller.
The Damned and the Destroyed was reissued three years ago – as an ebook only – by Prologue Books. Lee Child provides the Foreword.
A handful of our academic libraries have copies, as do Bibliothèque et Archives nationals du Québec and Library and Archives Canada.
"But then it wouldn't be the way Margaret Laurence made it."
Domestic dialogue between me and my wife from this weekend past. The subject is soup. I'd decided to tackle one of Margaret Laurence's favourite recipes. It was her very own creation. You can understand the attraction, I'm sure.
Now, I'm a really crummy cook, so it really says something that I had a hard time sticking to the recipe. The temptation to tweak was great. Water? Why not broth? A red pepper might add colour and taste. Those two quarts of milk seem like a lot, don't they? Of course, Laurence suggests that I might use less, but how am I to interpret "or however much you need for right amount for your soup pot"?
The result was a bland, watery mixture. I raised spoon to mouth reminding myself that this was what might have been served had I ever been invited to the writer's Lakefield home. It would've been impolite not to finish. Having never read Laurence, my Québecoise wife and teenaged daughter pushed their bowls away.
When came time to clear the table I turned to my wife. "Margaret Laurence was a much better novelist than cook," I said.
"So are you."
"But I'm not a novelist."
"Exactly."
As far as I know, the recipe for Margaret Laurence's cauliflower soup was first published in Those Marvelous Church Suppers (Kelowna, BC: Wood Lake, 1985). I took it from The CanLit Foodbook, (Toronto: Totem, 1987), which was compiled and illustrated by Margaret Atwood. Husband Graeme Gibson's recipes dominate.
The CanLit Foodbook was meant as a fundraiser in aid of PEN International and the Writer's Trust. Donations may be made by clicking on the links provided.
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.
