Sea to Sky

The Hunter Rayne series is evolving into one of the best I have read, and I’m thrilled it is located in Canada. Rayne is a retired RCMP officer, living in North Vancouver. In his new life he drives The Blue Knight, a semi truck, on long-haul freight pickups and deliveries. In and out among these treks, he discovers mysteries and crimes that need to be solved. Rayne, himself a likeable, caring and responsible fellow, has a tendency to get hooked once he has taken up the chase, and he doesn’t let go until he has solved it and turned the information over to the RCMP. Divorced, with two young adult daughters, he has not quite figured out how to find a new life; right now all he wants is the quiet and solitude of the long-haul freighter.

Rayne is surrounded by a small but consistent circle of friends: his landlord, a retired lawyer, who lives upstairs and from time to time passes out wise advice along with tea or a beer; El (Elspith), the formidable but good-hearted, call-a-spade-a-spade owner of the dispatching service Rayne works with, despite her not always helpful attempts to solve the mystery; and Sorry (Sorenson), the biker with the cobra tatoo, who helps Rayne out but has a lot of trouble with impulse control. This crew inevitably provides a complex and entertaining story.

In Sea to Sky, Rayne is meeting a woman he barely knows for a weekend of skiing in Whistler, BC. When the woman’s ex-spouse, who has continued to stalk and harass her, gets himself murdered, not only the woman, but Rayne himself turn out to be the main suspects. Rayne has to unravel this mystery fast, as the police won’t allow him to leave town, much less the country, and his livelihood depends on trucking.

R. E. Donald weaves an intricate and intriguing plot and creates in-depth characters who readers come to feel are friends.

For a great mystery novel, read: Sea to Sky!

Slow Curve on the Coquihalla

In Slow Curve on the Coquihalla, Hunter Rayne gets involved with an apparently accidental death of a dispatcher in Kamloops. The problem is, the curve was gentle and the truck’s speed was maybe 10 mph. The dispatcher’s daughter and Rayne combine with his usual crew to provide a fast-paced and entertaining story to discover the hidden crime.

R. E. Donald weaves an intricate and intriguing plot and creates in-depth characters who readers come to feel like are friends.

For a great mystery/crime story, read: Slow Curve on the Coquihalla.

by Stephen Legault, Touchwood

Another fascinating historical mystery by Stephen Legault, in this case questioning what motivated the hanging of Metis rebel leader Louis Riel. As this was a legal case, we can have no doubt that we are considering an issue of justice, and what justice should have been in the Riel case. For non-Canadians, a quick check to a resource such as Wikipedia will reveal this ongoing controversy in Canadian history concerning the execution of the Metis leader in rebelling against the Dominion government.

In this second story featuring Wallace Durrant, officer of the Northwest Territory Mounted Police in late Nineteenth Century Canada, Durrant arrives at the site of the final battles of the Riel uprisings and finds himself involved in a murder case that has occurred behind the lines on the base of the Dominion forces. After initial inquiries, Durrant recognizes the failure of the authorities handling the case to follow the required process to eliminate suspects, rather fastening on one man and refusing to look at alternative solutions to the case.

Durrant takes it upon himself to do what has been neglected, as he believes the man waiting to hang for the crime is innocent. As Durrant’s work continues, he and his friends Saul Armatage and Garnet Mortimer, discern that, far from an ordinary homicide motivated by some grudge, the case is politically founded and connected to the fate of the rebel leader himself. Durrant, his partners, and his friend Charlotte Mason identify three plots related to the Riel trial. The rest of the story consists of unravelling the plots and bringing the conspirators to justice.

In this story we learn about the complexity of the Riel case, which is why its resolution continues to be controversial in Canadian history. In the context of this political intrigue we see the NWTMP officers taking sides in the conspiracies resulting in betrayals and close calls with death. Durrant himself gives a clear voice to his understanding of the role of police in political intrigues: find the facts, illumine what is true, and remain impartial. This last is an essential aspect of justice, and if violated, makes travesty of the law. If Legault’s fictitious account of the various groupings around the capture of Louis Riel and the scenario each group envisions as having some grain of truth, impartiality would be the last ingredient to enter the mix.

I urge lovers of history and mystery to read The Third Conspiracy, as a fine rendering of a tantalizing puzzle, giving perspective on this major historical event in Canada.

Cliff Diver proves she’s a tough cop able to take mortal risks

Emilia is a cop in Acapulco. She works with Rico, not because she chose him, but because he was the only guy on the squad who would consider working with a woman. Remember this is Mexico; there is something called machismo. Like she can’t pull her weight! But she sets her colleagues’ anxiety aside pretty fast when one of the detectives tries to rape her right in the unisex bath room of the police station.

Then the chief of police turns up dead, and the higher ups put Emilia in his place, temporarily. Second-guessing everyone’s motives is the name of the game. Even when the victim is the chief of police. Even when that same victim may well have been the one running a drug ring in some kind of caper that maybe backfired on him. At times Emilia is not even sure of her own motives, especially when it comes to the handsome Gringo who runs the top local resort in Acapulco.

Carmen Amata spins a fast-paced, complex story with a well-integrated plot, lots of action and convincing characters. Emilia is a likeable protagonist with plenty of smarts and tough, too. She cares about law and justice but stays realistic about her methods. Best of all, she’s not dominating or ambitious for her personal gain, even when she is given the top lieutenant’s office. She prefers sharing and consensus, a woman’s particular gift to the process of law enforcement. Because of her way of relating to her subordinates, her colleagues’ gifts emerge, their true personalities surge forth, and much more is accomplished than in the top-down structure of the past.

Acapulco is a great setting for this story, and Amata handles it seamlessly. The motif of the cliff diver works very well. My only complaint is that, although I know proofreading is not at all what it used to be, I would like to see a number of errors and typos corrected. But then I read the PDF and do not know what the e-manuscript itself looks like. Also, these days most of us are less demanding about absolute accuracy because we read uncorrected e-mails all day!

Congratulations, Carmen! Four stars.

The Story:

Everything changes for nine-year-old Sana Shah as she witnesses the horror of her father’s assassination. She suffers through the pain of losing him, and realizing the worth of lessons learnt from him as Pearls of Wisdom. The tragedy forces Sana to leave her home in Pakistan, and traverse the globe to California. As time passes, she remains tormented by her memories as she struggles to rediscover her identity in a foreign land. Keen on pursuing journalism, she attends Stanford, where she meets a law student, Ahmer. They are drawn together by their cultural heritage, as well as their shared experience of having lost and endured. He becomes the source of her happiness, as well as the catalyst in mending her strained relationship with her family. As the story unfolds, however, their lives become intertwined in unexpected ways, creating obstacles that might be impossible to overcome.

Spanning nearly two decades, and set against a backdrop of landmark political events in both Pakistan and America in recent history, The Lost Pearl is an emotional tale about the strength of the human bond and the consequences of a truth left untold

The Review:

Like most serious novels The Last Pearl deals with issues of justice, in this case when nine-year-old Sana sees the face of the man who kills her father. From that point she embarks on an an intense interior journey to find a reality that makes some sense to her. While she seeks healing, happiness, and perhaps even peace, her anger drives her to find truth and justice about what was done to her father and her family. This kind of search can become complicated in a country like Pakistan where corruption in the judicial system challenges even the possibility of truth.

While the writer includes some long passages of interior thinking by her protagonist, rather than always depending on dialogue or action, I did not find this technique an impediment. If a dear friend were to hand you her diary, writings that chronicle a profound emotional, spiritual and moral journey two decades in length that she has travelled, your friend’s eyes begging you to read and receive the story that life has given her, perhaps you could not resist taking it into your hands and partaking of this experience that carries us through a dramatic catharsis. Sana brings us with her through both crucible and the surprise of forgiveness. You the reader will share in this quest for justice as you open yourself to the crisis, trauma and eventual healing that takes place in the mind and experience of this young Pakistani protagonist, who, as time goes on, also comes to understand her own responsibility in how the drama will turn out.

This well-constructed story with engaging and believable characters takes us to a deep level and gives those of us whose main experience is North American another view of Muslim reality that can broaden our understanding of the Pakistani people and help us to leave behind the caricatures we so easily take from the news media in a time of international hostilities. It is not that extremists do not exist; but in this story we see peace-loving honourable people struggling with what life gives them just as people do everywhere.

From another angle, this story could be a moral tale about just telling the plain truth, and the devastating results of keeping family secrets.

Most important, The Last Pearl is a family story with the complications that we encounter with parents and siblings, uncles and aunts and all the rest. It is about the need to belong and the pain of estrangement. We come to gain intimate knowledge of the key players in this story and especially of the tangled network of emotions and beliefs that motivate Sana through the confusion and chaos of her growing years and her endeavour to find her way towards healing and justice.

by C. J. Graves

I recently wrote a review for this book. The review deals more with the story than the ethical issues, but the book includes a lot of those. First, in any who-done-it, the detective is trying to find out the truth and bring the criminal to justice. But this book includes a lot of other observations, such as a critique of the hypocrises of the large privately-run evangelical organization, which, if you have the interest, are worth noting.

The review is, as follows:

My observation is that character Jayden Morrow is the Kinsey Millhone for the next generation. Women in Jayden’s generation have at least had the option of serving in the military. Even if they choose not to take on the life of a soldier themselves, they understand that women can and do just that. In the Twenty-first Century women exist who know how to rely on themselves and to work under pressure in a combat team. Knowing about women in active and daring roles means that someone like Jayden, a tough, no-nonsense, talk-straight woman, is believable. It is even funny seeing people prance and dance around Jayden with their little manipulative techniques, while she calls a spade a spade and forges ahead, hardly bothering with common pleasantries.

We get to know Jayden Morrow fast and leap into not only her life experience but her psyche. She is what we call a well-rounded character, and because she is suffering something like post-traumatic stress from her war-time experience, she is also struggling to find herself and is able to grow, despite the armour she has had to build around herself to cope with the battle zone.

In the story Jayden has turned to private detection after returning from a stint in Iraq. She takes on the task of finding what really happened when teen-aged Sara Richardson was killed on the grounds of the Light the Way Church, a mammoth organization, and whether the son of her clients, Eric Hall, is as guilty as the police are convinced he is. To find out, she tries to permeate the church hierarchy, running up against the formidable Pastor Lightner, who is not about to let a simple murder besmirch the reputation of his church. His barring her from the church campus forces Jayden to get creative.

As a reader, I liked Jayden right away. If she were a real human being and not a character, she might scare me witless; but as a detective heroine, she is great. And despite her tough exterior we know the vulnerable Jayden is there inside somewhere because we see her concern and protectiveness emerge for the vulnerable adolescent girls in the story who are in danger. Jayden is strong; she trains in karate. Jayden can fight like an Amazon. She uses her instincts and intuition to glean the information she needs. She lusts. She cries, and she can learn. I am looking forward to seeing a lot more of Jayden in the future.

And there is this wonderful little on-again off-again love story going on as a subplot that grounds us in the everyday reality of this character’s life.

The other characters in the novel are well delineated, consistent and believable. C. J. Graves gives us just enough of the milieu of the organization and place of the Light the Way church complex and housing development to know our way around and get what is going on. We don’t bog down in long descriptions or rabbit-track off into obscure corners that divert us from the plot that clips along at just the right pace.

For readers who enjoy mysteries with feisty, proactive protagonists, Crossed is just the book. I highly recommend it.

In my novel Miracles of the Ear-pod Tree, a Canadian woman travels to the Central American country of Ixcheltlán. At the beginning of the trip she is robbed and due to extraordinary circumstances, must continue the trip without resources. Thus she begins to meet, interact with, and learn about the lives of the poor in América Central. One thing she learns to her horror is that the military organizations of Central American countries, which are massacring their own peoples, were trained in, among other things, the techniques of torture, at the School of the Americas under the auspices of the United States Army in Fort Benning, Georgia.

The time in which this novel is set is the late 1980′s. In the face of ongoing opposition, the USA government has changed the name of the school but it continues to exist today. Here is a bit about the SOA from the SOA Watch website.

SOA Watch is an independent organization that seeks to close the US Army School of the Americas, under whatever name it is called, through vigils and fasts, demonstrations and nonviolent protest, as well as media and legislative work.

On November 16, 1989, six Jesuit priests, their co-worker and her teenage daughter were massacred in El Salvador. A U.S. Congressional Task Force reported that those responsible were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

In 1990 SOA Watch began in a tiny apartment outside the main gate of Ft. Benning. While starting with a small group, SOA Watch quickly drew upon the knowledge and experience of many in the U.S. who had worked with the people of Latin America in the 1970′s and 80′s.

Today, the SOA Watch movement is a large, diverse, grassroots movement rooted in solidarity with the people of Latin America. The goal of SOA Watch is to close the SOA and to change U.S. foreign policy in Latin America by educating the public, lobbying Congress and participating in creative, nonviolent resistance. The Pentagon has responded to the growing movement and Congress’ near closure of the SOA with a PR campaign to give the SOA a new image. In an attempt to disassociate the school with its horrific past, the SOA was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in January of 2001.

From November 16-18 [2012], over two thousand students, prison abolitionists, teachers, nuns, immigrants, musicians, farmers, activists and workers from across the Americas mobilized to the gates of Fort Benning, to once more express our humanity and solidarity against the school of death and destruction. This year, we were fortunate to have so many activists from Latin America and the Caribbean who shared their stories with us and walked with us. It was a true manifestation of the saying: “Somos Una América! We are One America!” ADELANTE! NO MORE DEATHS! ACT NOW!

Unforeseen: Journey through Rust and Ruin

by Sarah Bartsch

A book review by Kathleen Schmitt, author of Conversations with Amelia.

I love Unforeseen: Journey through Rust and Ruin. This action-fraught story about a fifteen-year-old girl who becomes the first woman Samurai warrior draws the reader into two worlds, 1915 Japan with its traditions, and a modern city discovered on a scary trek through a dangerous and polluted wasteland. Instantly we connect with our protagonist’s determination to prove herself on her first solo mission, and with the feelings of confusion and fear that well up in her.

Because the number of male warriors has diminished greatly, rather than that female warriors are particularly desired, Miyako has undergone rigorous training and proved herself fit to go on a mission. She is confident of her skills, and yet she suffers the lack of confidence of the inexperienced, as she moves through the portal of her own nation of Japan into another world, a wasteland.

Miyako’s assignment is peculiar for a first one. She is sent outside alone without clarity about her task, and more ominously, without explanation of how she will be able to return to Japan. Something odd surrounds the whole mission that makes her anxious. Still, she has received her orders. She goes.

From her step through the portal we follow Miyako through one peril after another, ending up fairly quickly in a city she has known nothing of: a modern city with electric trains and alarm systems and towering buildings that feel wobbly to her feet. From her first encounter with inventor and scavenger Sook in the wasteland and then a gang of kidnappers who want to keep her alive, she is never sure who she can trust or why she is a target.

The story continues with layers of confusion and revelation.

Throughout, we learn about Miyako’s character and some important events of her past. We gain sympathy for her, and suffer her flares of both confidence and doubt. Her success and welfare become our concern as the story moves forward. Because Sook’s point of view is also shared with us, we have a sense of his basic solidness and decency. The others in the story, save for Miyako’s mother and the girl’s teacher Shisho back home, we are not so sure about. The author keeps us in the web of Miyako’s uncertainty.

Sarah Bartsch has written a well-paced story full of events that lure us into exciting new worlds. The mystery of Miyako’s mission, the puzzle of why someone has sent her out to be kidnapped, and the action propel us through the story. The characters evolve as they should. The writing is tight and economic. Ms. Bartsch creates the settings of two distinct nations, one just past the turn of the Twentieth Century and one modern, and the wasteland between them, with clarity and through the perceptions of the characters. The style of the book itself is attractive and demonstrates its genre.

The one question I have, because I am older than the intended audience of this tale and this is the first steampunk story as such that I have read, regards the dialogue, that is snappy and modern, with use of current slang. I would expect Miyako’s thoughts and words to be more formal, more precise or even delicate in certain ways, and come from a world view of sensitivity and fine discrimination, like a Japanese painting. That she would quickly learn the slang of the modern city would be appropriate, and perhaps she would do so clumsily and everyone would have a laugh when she makes mistakes, or her misconception of language could even get her into trouble.

To younger readers, however, for whom this story was written, I doubt this subtlety is a problem, but in my mind modifying dialogue would help to clarify the difference of two distinct worlds and make the story line stronger. Also, I assume the author decided to not complicate her plot with language barriers between the two cities, which I see as a positive move to enable her readers to just enjoy the story.

I love Miyako, and would like to see more of her in future stories.

I highly recommend Unforeseen, especially to young readers.

To go to Sarah’s Goodreads book show site, use http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16135336.Unforeseen__Journey_Through_Rust_and_Ruin/

And if you are new to steampunk like I am, see http://www.steampunk.com/what-is-steampunk/

Arley McNeney’s THE TIME WE ALL WENT MARCHING is, besides being an engrossing story, one of the best examples of “show, don’t tell.” This writers’ adage is especially important when we write about justice. “Don’t preach. Show.”

In THE TIME WE ALL WENT MARCHING our protagonist is Edie, a young woman paired up with one of the young men in Canada’s Great Depression era who went on the trek to Ottawa to protest the plight of workers in that desperate time. Throughout the story Edie recalls Slim’s tales of the On to Ottawa Trek, the detailed hardships of the men who took part in it, riding atop boxcars in freezing weather. The trek ended in disaster, of course, with the riot in Regina, Saskatchewan, when the government of Canada cracked down on the movement. Slim was lucky. He didn’t get killed or even wounded — visibly. He did suffer damage to his respiratory system due to tear gas. His lungs were already shot; for years he had worked in coal mines. His one talent seemed to be locating the profit-making strains of coal or ore deep in the bowels of the earth where breathing dust was about as natural as taking in air.

McNeney gives us graphic descriptions of the whole scenario. Slim and Edie live with their small son in a tent. By the time we arrive in the story, Slim is about burned out, spending his money, such as it is, on liquor and women other than his wife. Edie is fed up, and we learn the whole tale through her memories as she takes Belly their son by train to her mother’s house in New Westminster, British Columbia. We feel her determination amidst a wallow of fearfulness about her chances in the world of the poor. We see and feel and smell each detail in this dash for freedom, for the chance of a new life:

On the walls, stains where the water has found the wrong way out of the pipes make the shapes of continents (in the candle light). The mould and the rusty water give the bathroom the odour of stone underneath the human stink. The pipes knock as if there is someone trapped nearby, tapping out a code, waiting to be saved… The water sputters out of the tap, hairs floating in the tub, but there’s no time to care about that; nothing is clean here; nothing has been clean anywhere they’ve lived; there is nothing to be done; snow is the only whiteness for miles and even that will be greyed by dirt and soot come morning.

When a landslide occurs and a boulder crashes into their train, injuring Belly’s face with broken glass, Edie longs for someone to take charge and tend the boy, but in the end she is the one who has to sew together the gash without the help of anything to diminish the pain for her son. When the cut becomes infected, she is desperate with fear, does what she can to remove the pus, but the dream cure, penicillin, is something for the rich in Canada.

A poignant addition to the mix is Belly’s four-year-old perception of what is happening. Encouraged by his mother in his imaginary fantasies of war and adventure, he navigates the change and uncertainty of this trip, the painful surgery and infection, and his fear of losing his mother, keeping us on tenterhooks as to the outcome of the story. Will she just leave him and go her own way? Poverty can dull even the basic instincts of decency, much less of justice. By the end, while admiring Edie’s pluck and her will to survive, all we can do is dread her next step, whatever it is, because any outcome from this point can only bring tragedy and pain.

Arley McNeney has the great gift of storytelling. She brings us into the story with her. Through the eyes of her characters we learn just how far away justice can be.

Throughout the novel we see the deterioration and loss of dreams of both men and women, and the terror and despair that begins to dominate their minds and bodies. Even Edie’s goal of returning to her mother’s house, allegedly to deposit her son so she can get on the road to find a better future for herself, is tragic. The only resource she can think of is to return to the relative safety of a home which only ten years before she had been desperate to escape — a broken home where the children were more or less the caregiver of their single mother. Yet “home” means a house which Edie never had in her married life. “Home” also includes a “mother” who would know what to do in a medical emergency, unlike Edie herself.

Even more than the physical details, we experience the mental distortions that both feed and disillusion the poor. We become caught up in the downward spiral with all of its emotion and confusion.

The Time We All Went Marching was published in 2011 by Gooselane Editions of Frederickton, New Brunswick.

Although I’ve written about novels, the theme of justice shows up in other forms of literature. I have come across the most marvelous book. It is called DreamFields: A Peek into the World of Migrant Youth. This book is an anthology of writing by migrant youth of Mount Vernon WA, editied by Janice Blackmore.

Blackmore suggests that a great part of justice is the willingness to learn about each others’ worlds and experience. This anthology showcases the willingness of these Skagit Valley young people to find the courage to speak up about what their world is like, and what they have experienced in the wealthiest land in the world. These teen-agers come from a variety of cultural and racial backgrounds and levels of education. They are the children of the seasonal workers in agriculture who live in this area of the USA. What is their experience? What is uppermost in their hearts?

The stories the children tell include:

Vivid stories of crossing the border between Mexico and the USA.

Talk of “The American Dream” and “The Promised Land”

Grinding anxiety about getting sent away, or parents being sent away, and the effect of these fears on school work and hopes for the future

Enduring demeaning talk and actions

Enduring social isolation and getting into trouble

Poverty and endless work on top of school work

Dreams of succeeding at school and hopes for the future

Here are a few samples of the writing.

The people in the government do not want to give us papers, they do not want us to reach for the stars. Is it because they do not want kids to have dreams? Or is it because they do not know how it feels to work day and night under the burning sun with its rays making us weak and tired? Above all I think it is because they do not know the pain and suffering a kid might feel when he wakes up to the loud noise of knocking and of men arresting his parents…because of a piece of paper. They do not know the pain of the kid that now needs to struggle to survive, to find a way to eat, and even feed his brothers and sisters. They can’t even count the endless tears of sadness the kid drops… “A Piece of Paper“ p. 24.

Thoughts keeping me up all night, thinking who’s next…fearing my family could just all disappear. Parents could be taken away while kids are sitting at school, teachers teaching them about justice…. “End the Wars” p. 31

Many issues compose the complex questions around Immigration and the building of the Great Wall. Yet it is hard to read these stories without recognizing the humanity of migrant peoples and to remember that all peoples are connected and bear a responsibility to one another to show respect and give dignity and care.

I hear my people cry out for a better life…so with great hopes they go to the land of dreams, a land that has people from all over the world. But when my people came, they looked at us and said, Get out! They hunted us like animals. The Promised Land, p. 25

DreamFields: A Peek into the World of Migrant Youth. Edited by Janice Blackmore, http://dreamfieldsbook.wordpress.com

Justice is complicated, even in literature….

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Kathleen

ALIAS GRACE, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog, is the story of a woman condemned to life in prison due to her — participation? cooperation? active instigation? — of the murder of her employer and his pregnant housekeeper/mistress. Seeing Grace as the victim of sensationalistic journalism, false rumours, distorted perceptions of women, and erroneous testimony, the psychiatrist Dr. Simon Jordan begins his quest to determine what, exactly, Grace’s involvement in the murder was. Why? Because Grace herself could not remember, or said she couldn’t. The question was, could she really not remember, or was she dissembling in order to avoid hanging.

In this almost pastoral novel, set as it is in rural Canada in the mid-1800s, the pace moves slowly, keeping us intensely aware of Grace’s long days and years in Kingston prison, time moving like molasses. Dr. Jordan’s progress also lags. He can’t seem to get below the surface Grace presents him, can’t unlock her psyche, so that his own study of the woman drags on and on with few results. One has to wonder if the the very weight of this ponderous lack of progress comes to overwhelm the characters. The good doctor falls prey to the scheming of his poverty-stricken landlady; all of the sexual sensibility he feels in a case like Grace’s, based on a love triangle and ribald passions, erupts in this unlikely affair. Far from alleviating the needs of his sexual energy, however, this passion seems to pull him down, down, down to the moment when he himself faces the decision of whether to murder his lover’s spouse.

Efforts to prove Grace’s innocence (or guilt) continue, but with little evidence to save her. Then an old friend of Grace’s, Jeremiah, arrives impersonating a European specialist in a new method of hypnotism which he believes will enable the group to move past whatever locks Grace’s subconscious. With the group’s consent and presence, Jeremiah hypnotizes the woman. This process, however, is hampered by the fact that they have placed themselves where seances are often enacted, and despite efforts to prevent the arrival of spirits into the room, they do, or at least one of them does.

When questioned, it is not Grace herself who responds; it is someone else — Grace’s old friend Mary? Or one of the persons Grace may have helped to murder: Nancy? Suddenly the plot veers off that of scientific enquiry into the spirit world. The pastor present thinks Grace needs to exorcise a demon. The spiritualist thinks she is inhabited by her old friend’s spirit and cannot be held accountable whether or not she took part in the murders. Neverthless, they have not gained any evidence that might persuade the legal authorities to release Grace.

At this point, Dr. Jordan, almost mad himself, and thoroughly frightened, flees Kingston, leaving Grace and his mistress no explanation and bereft.

We have lived in a scientific age, until recently. When scientific enquiry suddenly encounters its own limits and the possibilities of realities far beyond its scope, scientists usually deny the reality of those other possibilities. This impasse that Dr. Jordan reached reminded me of a conversation between the two psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung. The two men were arguing about the possibilities of the spiritual realm, Freud against and Jung for. As they were arguing, Jung warned Freud that something unexpected was about to happen, and a big noise erupted. I don’t remember the whole story, but it may have been that something floated, a chair perhaps. At any rate, Freud was deeply offended and frightened, and the two men became alienated.

Today’s crime novels are all about methods and scientific proofs of ‘who done it.’ Perhaps it is not surprising that so many fantasy and similar novels are emerging to fill in the void of what cannot be discovered in linear terms.

At the end we do not know whether Grace was guilty or not. The knowledge of the day is simply incapable of discovering the answer. Even Grace herself does not know. Justice is not something simple to discover. Ambiguity and soul-searching form much of the process. We are quick to want clear answers. Yet the answer is just not there.