Murder at Osgoode Hall: An Amicus Curiae Mystery

Henry G. MacLeod teaches sociology at both Trent University and the
University of Waterloo.

Murder at Osgoode Hall is the first in a series of cat mysteries
featuring Amicus Curiae (“friend of the court”) of Osgoode Hall,
Q.C. (Questing Cat, not Queen’s Counsel), the narrator of this amusing
courtroom drama.

The sanctity of Osgoode Hall, home of the Law Society of Upper Canada,
has been violated by murder. Jeremiah “Splinter” Debeers has been
electrocuted by an obstinate photocopier in the Society’s Great
Library. Debeers, one of the benchers (elected officials who govern the
law society) had a reputation of being “a pain in the backside of his
colleagues” and was called Splinter because he frequently went
splintering off on various anti-establishment crusades. His fellow
benchers, wealthy old boys, spent their leisure time thinking up
“sordid and gruesome ways of doing” Splinter in. So there is no lack
of suspects.

Amicus is the first to find the body and to realize that Debeers was
murdered. Through the cat’s inquisitiveness, the investigators
discover the equipment used to tamper with the photocopier in assistant
librarian Katrina Slovenskaya’s desk. Katrina, Amicus’s friend, is
put on trial for first-degree murder. We watch the trial unfold through
the anxious eyes of Amicus, being treated along the way to his witty
observations about humans.

Jeffrey Miller has written a highly satirical whodunit that pokes fun
at the Law Society of Upper Canada through an insider look at the
workings of Osgoode Hall. It touches on issues dear to the heart of many
Ontario lawyers—the opening of its exclusive dining room to the
public, the existence of the benchers’ valuable wine cellar, and the
question of benchers’ remuneration. It is a fun read, with
apricot-eating squirrels, legal sidebars, and the legal history of the
cat (Amicus himself had been tried for the murder of a bird in the
Osgoode Hall’s garden; his sentence had been successfully appealed
through the intervention of Katrina).