Created by Eric Wright
(1929-2015)
LUCY TRIMBLE‘s a forty-something, part-time librarian and owner of a bed-and-breakfast, living out the last days of a crumbling marriage, in the sleepy Ontario town of Longborough, somewhere 150 miles or so east of Toronto.
So how does she end up running a Toronto detective agency? Seems she’s the sole surviving heir of an almost-forgotten cousin, David Trimble, who’s recently died of a heart attack and has left behind the manuscript for an unfinished novel and a detective agency slowly going down the drain.
In Toronto to settle the estate, and reluctant to return to an abusive husband and a job going nowhere, she decides to move to the big city and try her hand at detective work. So phht!!! goes hubby and Lucy’s married name.
As one does…
Her first case? Finding out if her cousin really died of natural causes.
The catch is that most of her clients are lowlife scum, scammers and liars–and Lucy, savoring a future that’s suddenly wide open, is way out of her depth. She’s booksmart, but naive about life in the big city, and she tends to jump to conclusions. But she’s tougher and more resillient than she looks. As one critic put it, “Not so much hard-boiled as poached gently.”
Fortunately, she soon acquires some new friends to help her with her new life—mostly notably a handsome racehorse trainer by the name of Johnny Comstock.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Wright was born in England but immigrated to Canada as a young man and became one their most acclaimed crime writers, best known for the excellent (but definitely non-hard-boiled) police procedurals about Toronto cop Charlie Salter. A professor of English at Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, he also wrote two books about private eye Lucy, and a third series character featured Joe Barley, a permanent part-time sessional instructor of English literature at a community college in Toronto who is occasionally employed by a security company as a “watcher.” In the fall of 2015 Wright was notified that he had been selected for the Crime Writers of Canada Grand Master Award, which was awarded posthumously in May 2016.
UNDER OATH
- “Told with Wright’s usual skill and gentle humor, this cleverly plotted mystery is fanciful fun, and Lucy Brenner is a one-of-a-kind delight.”
— Emily Melton on Death of a Sunday Writer (Booklist) - “[Wright’s] well-rounded characters, lyric if low-key prose and subtle humor transforms Lucy’s burgeoning caseload into a piece of satisfying suspense.”
— Publishers Weekly on Death on the Rocks
NOVELS
- Death of a Sunday Writer (1996) | Buy this book
- Death on the Rocks (1999) | Buy this book
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Big Al Hubin for putting me straight on this one.
