The Stand-In

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

David Helwig is one of Canada’s most prolific novelist-poets. This
challenging but rewarding novel revolves around the themes of
friendship, marriage, infidelity, and certain revenge. It is structured
as a series of three rambling lectures that are delivered by the
stand-in for a better-known colleague who was found dead in a hotel room
a week earlier. The lectures themselves are essentially Chekhovian in
nature. The reader as audience ponders their ambiguities, trying to
discern their method and motive.

Helwig’s novel, a seamless blend of brittle postmodern analysis and
old-fashioned whodunit, is moody, suspenseful, and utterly compelling.
Properly adapted, it would make for an invigorating evening at the
theatre.