Created by Maurice Gagnon
(1912-99)
DEIRDRE O’HARA is a “vibrant young Montreal lawyer and highly-specialized marine insurance investigator” who appears in three novels (labelled as “The Deirdre O’Hara Files”)and at least one short story, by French-Canadian author Maurice Gagnon.
She has a Siberian husky called Red Devil, and lives on a yacht, The Siren, that she keeps in the Brossard marina across the river from Montreal.
I must admit, it was a hoot to read these, mostly because I was so familiar with the setting–I lived only a mile or so away, and would often bicycle right past that marina, sometimes with my kids, on the very bikepath beside the St. Lawrence River where Deirdre discovers the body of a young woman at the beginning of The Inner Ring, the first book of the series.
Your mileage, of course, may vary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maurice Gagnon was born on August 13, 1912 in Winnipeg, Manitoba and died in 1999. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in law from McGill University and also holds a master’s degree in history and a doctorate in philosophy. His literary career began in 1956, writing in both English and French, and over a long and successful career he produced more than 60 radio and television plays for the CBC/Radio Canada and others, as well as more than 40 novels, including mysteries and science fiction. In the last few years of his life, at least four of his mysteries were published in English, including the Deirdre O’Hara files and a standalone featuring Montreal private eye Rowena Grant. He also published short stories in La Revue populaire, La Revue moderne and Châtelaine. His archives are kept at the Montreal Archives Center of Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
NOVELS
- The Inner Ring (1985) | Buy this book
- A Dark Night Offshore (1986) |Buy this book
- Doubtful Motives (1987) | Buy this book
SHORT STORIES
- “The Seaway Incident” (1995, Investigating Women)
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Murder in a Distinct Society (C’est ma ville aussi…)
Montreal Eyes
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith (October 2000). “I’ll tell you right out that I’m a man who likes talking to a man that likes to talk.”
