Death by Degrees

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

This is the 10th of Eric Wright’s books featuring Toronto policeman
Charlie Salter. A few titles back, the publishers changed the
dust-jacket blurb from “A Charlie Salter Mystery” to “A Charlie
Salter Novel,” and this book is a good example of why. The
mystery—in this case, the death of a community college teacher—forms
only part of the story; the rest concerns the very serious, perhaps
fatal, illness of Charlie’s father, and Charlie’s relationships with
his father and with his sons. Unlike some series detectives, Charlie
ages. A son who was 14 when we met him in the first novel is about to
make Charlie a grandfather and to go into business. Death by Degrees (a
very clever title, as the dénouement makes clear) goes back to
Charlie’s first appearance at a Toronto community college. (Eric
Wright taught in one for many years.) A teacher from the first book even
re-appears to help Charlie in this one.

The novel ends with Charlie contemplating what he has always rejected:
a sabbatical leave. Does this mean time off for Mr. Wright? One hopes
not. While Death by Degrees lacks page-turning suspense, sex, and
violence, it has exemplary writing, a wonderfully realized Toronto
ambience, an engrossing story, and characters the reader cares about.