A Hand in the Water: The Many Lies of Albert Walker

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

This book by Toronto Star journalist Bill Schiller was the first on the
shelves about the infamous Albert Walker affair. It appeared only weeks
after the one-time Ontario investment counselor was found guilty of
murder in England, six years after fleeing Canada with $2 million in
stolen money. The author conducted interviews and did research in
Canada, England, and Switzerland, and also had a series of pre-trial
conversations with Walker himself. En route to the trial, which occupies
the last 23 of the book’s 290 pages, Schiller gives us a richly
detailed account of the life and crimes of Albert Walker, and the lives
he and his daughter led under various identities during their years as
fugitives. Their story, and that of the international police work that,
by a bizarre twist of good luck, came to suspect Walker of murder, makes
for gripping reading, some of it more bizarre than a mystery novelist
might imagine.

But fascinating as it is, it leaves unanswered one question, which
hovered salaciously over the media coverage of the story and clearly
unsettled the jury: Schiller says nothing conclusive about the paternity
of Walker’s daughter’s two children. From the evidence he directly
presents, however, including much-earlier suspicions by Walker’s wife
about her husband’s behavior with another daughter, he leaves little
doubt.

The book has no index, but there are photographs, and Schiller keeps us
turning the pages with brisk and lively prose. While some readers might
find his use of “reconstructed” dialogue—even in
bedrooms—excessive or unnecessary, others might enjoy the fiction-like
style he often uses. But as he disarmingly tells us: “I tried never to
lose sight of my primary task: to tell a story, in essence, to be a
storyteller of fact.”