Death of a Sunday Writer

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

After writing nine internationally successful and award-winning novels
that gave us Canada’s most famous fictional policeman, Charlie Salter,
Eric Wright next produced a noncriminous novel but has now returned to
the crime field with a far-from-typical private eye. She is Lucy
Trimble, 47. Since she separated two years ago from her husband of 23
years, Lucy has been working as a librarian in a town between Kingston
and Toronto. She finds that she is the heir of a cousin whom she barely
remembers, and drives to Toronto to see to his affairs. He was, it turns
out, a private detective. When a would-be client shows up seeking the
late PI, Lucy decides to take the job—and the game is afoot. She is
soon involved in a multilevel plot involving her late cousin and her new
vocation, as well as having personal decisions to make.

Death of a Sunday Writer is not a novel of suspense and is certainly
not of the hardboiled-detective genre, but the plot moves along amiably,
the Toronto environment is well realized, and one hopes that the
supporting cast (in particular, Lucy’s Chinese landlord and a nearby
hairdresser) will be back when Lucy makes her inevitable return.