Once Upon a Time

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

Eighty-year-old Eugene Walker is found frozen to death next to his
family car in the parking lot of the Ottawa Civic Hospital. To all
appearances, his death was from natural causes, but Inspector Michael
Green is suspicious. In theory, the cut on Walker’s forehead could
have been caused by him hitting the wing mirror as he collapsed, but his
body was found by the passenger side of the car and there was no wing
mirror on that side.

When a search of Walker’s farmhouse turns up a German identification
card concealed in a secret compartment of an old tool box, Green’s
suspicions deepen, especially since the dead man’s family seem to be
withholding information when questioned. Was the victim a Jewish
concentration camp survivor or a Nazi soldier trying to escape
imprisonment? Could someone have tracked him down for revenge? As the
story unfolds, so does a complex pattern of family and other
relationships and attitudes, affecting not only the victim, but also the
investigating officer.

Green’s search for clues takes him deep into the realm of Holocaust
documentation and the lives of those who survived. The interaction
between him and his father, while apparently a sidebar to the main plot,
provides a revealing glimpse both of the relationship between the two
and of the way that so many children of survivors felt they had to
“dance around” the whole Holocaust issue. Drawing history from the
survivors had to be done gently and skilfully: “‘He almost talked
about it,’ Green says. ‘It’s the closest he’s ever come to
telling me anything.’” In the end, what his father does tell him has
a vital role in his solving the mystery.

Once Upon a Time, Fradkin’s second Inspector Green mystery, was
inspired by the author’s husband’s work as a war-crimes prosecutor
and raises many interesting questions relating to the period. All the
characters are fictional, but all the locales in the Ottawa area exist
and the references to events in Occupied Europe are based on fact.