Headline: Murder.

Pia is a young journalist who moonlights as a mystery writer. As the temporary arts editor of her newspaper in Toronto she still gets calls from her old connections on the political beat. One of them tells her that the Minister of Culture in the Ontario government, May Gatway, has been found murdered in the extensive attics of the Legislature, pinned to a column by a fireplace poker.

The initial direction of the investigation is connected with the fact that the minister had just announced to a Jewish gathering that the government was going to insist on the examination of all government-funded art collections to enable the return of any works stolen by the Nazis during World War II. This in turn opens the possibility that any private collector holding such works might be pressured to do the same thing and that one of them may have done the murder. On the list of all the suspects is Gatway’s husband, Paul Stark (who is seriously in debt), Wilson Scott, an art-collecting Member of the Legislature, and, it emerges, Martin Geneve, a wealthy and handsome art collector who is expressing a personal romantic interest in Pia.

After Wilson Scott turns up dead in a motel with a suspicious suicide note that claims he killed Gatway complications ensue and it becomes clear that Pia has made herself into a target for the killer. After a series of twists and dangers a murderer is apprehended.

The best features of this “killer” are its pace, wit, good quick characterizations, and a fine sense of things Toronto. It is intelligent and light on its feet. A good read.