Penelope Williams’s superb debut mystery is one of those books you don’t want to put down. From the opening, as the small town of Parnell, Ont., awaits a storm they call the Fist of God, we are caught in an atmosphere of suspense that keeps the story moving. The storm ends with a death, surely an act of God. The corpse – Bobby Connolly – is universally despised even by his own family. But other deaths come that aren’t so convenient or so easily solved.
Charlotte Gray, one of Canada’s finest social historians, resurrects Oakes before his death, giving us a grand picture of the Ontario gold mining rush in all its shabby glory. She also attempts, fairly successfully, to solve the mystery of who killed Oakes. But the bigger mystery of what happened to his millions appears to have died with him. This is superior true-crime writing and if you’ve got a Canadian history buff on your list, this is the perfect gift.
McDiarmid has reconstructed lives impacted by poverty and addiction, discovered hopes and families torn apart and joined in healing events to restore the dead to their communities in this skillfully written and carefully researched book. There is more than a touch of the polemic in her prose but it doesn’t tarnish the essential tale of these women who died alone on the road while being “overpoliced and underprotected,” as she puts it.
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