Death of a Sunday Writer

Lucy Trimble Brenner, middle-aged part-time librarian, has sought refuge from a crumbling marriage by establishing a bed-and-breakfast in the sleepy northern Ontario town of Longborough. When a distant relative suddenly bequeaths her his ailing Toronto detective agency, Lucy soon enough finds reasons to suspect that David Trimble's death, despite appearances, may not have been natural or accidental at all. Throwing caution aside, she begins to investigate Trimble's operations and comes into contact with the raffish world of horse racing and its fringe characters, some quaint, others sinister. When finally brought to light, Trimble's journals prove to be part fact, part fiction, and it becomes progressively more difficult to determine whether or not their hints of danger are false or all too real. Meanwhile, to earn a living Lucy takes on as her first client a man who wants her to tail his agoraphobic wife on her occasional mysterious forays into Toronto's nightlife. And seasoned investigator JackBrighton hires her to locate the missing legatee to a handsome fortune left him by his English mother, a case that leads to a squalid rural farmhouse and a fifty-year-old mystery. Wry and disarming, Death of a Sunday Writer is the story of Lucy's surprising self-discovery in the real world. As unusual events force her to question her basic assumptions, she moves toward a denouement that manages to turn all expectations totally upside down. In the end, Lucy Trimble Brenner emerges as one of Eric Wright's most engaging characters.