Make Mine Murder

A collection of 3 mystery stories.

Returning to New York after serving in the Second World War, Gerry Barnes finds himself under pressure from his girlfriend Paula to marry and settle down. To her dismay, he shows little desire to do either: instead, he sets himself up as a private detective! Paula half-jokingly vows to find him his first client - not realizing it will be herself. For when she returns to her hotel, she finds the body of a dead man sprawled on her bed, the handle of a knife sticking up out of his throat!

On September 18, 1992, nine men died in the labyrinthine drifts of Yellowknife's Giant gold mine, after four months of a painful labor dispute. Six of the dead were Giant employees; three were "replacement workers". All were husbands, fathers, sons, lovers, friends, firefighters, draegermen. Their deaths brought squadrons of police, investigators and the eye of the national media to Yellowknife. Roger Warren, a longtime Giant employee, was convicted on nine counts of second-degree murder. A multi-million dollar civil suit is ongoing. Those were the headlines reported in the nightly news, but as Yellowknife journalists Lee Selleck and Francis Thompson note, the real story of the Giant Mine tragedy was, up until now, untold. In a meticulously researched expose that unfolds like a compelling murder mystery, the two journalists peet back the complex layers of the events leading up to the unraveling of a close-knit community. They reveal a large and fascinating cast of players: Peggy Witte, the mine owner, whose belligerent strikebreaking tactics were unprecedented in the Canadian mining industry; an inexperienced and stubborn union whose members sometimes resorted to criminal acts; a paramilitary corporate security force; police who often seemed to act as agents of Giant Mine management; and an absentee federal government with close ties to the mining industry. They take you into the lives of miners and their families struggling to come to grips with issues that pitted relatives and friends against each other and saw homes, businesses, dignity and eventually, lives, tumble into the black abyss. And, in a mesmerizing recreation of the mine blast and subsequent trial of Roger Warren, theyraise serious and far-reaching doubts about the guilt of the man convicted of killing his co-workers. Utterly compelling and controversial, Dying for Gold is a masterful work of investigative journalism.

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year In this “engrossing must-read” by “Canada’s most accomplished popular historian” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine), the glittering life and brutal murder of Sir Harry Oakes is newly investigated. Murdered Midas is “superior true-crime writing” (The Globe and Mail). On an island paradise in 1943, Sir Harry Oakes, gold-mining tycoon, philanthropist and one of the richest men in the British Empire, is murdered. The news of his death surges across the English-speaking world, from London, the Imperial centre, to the remote Canadian mining town of Kirkland Lake in the Northern Ontario bush. The murder becomes celebrated as the crime of the century. The layers of mystery deepen as the involvement of Count Alfred de Marigny, Oakes’s son-in-law, comes into question. Also suspicious are the odd machinations of the governor of the Bahamas, the former King Edward VIII. But despite a sensational trial, no murderer is convicted. Rumours about Oakes’s missing fortune are unrelenting, and fascination with the story has persisted for decades. Award-winning biographer and popular historian Charlotte Gray explores the life of the man behind the scandal—from his early, hardscrabble days during the massive mineral rush in Northern Ontario, to the fabulous fortune he reaped from his own gold mine, to his grandiose gestures of philanthropy. And Gray brings fresh eyes to the bungled investigation and shocking trial on the remote colonial island, proposing an overlooked suspect in this long cold case. Murdered Midas is the story of the man behind the newspaper headlines, a man both admired and reviled who, despite great wealth and public standing, never experienced justice.

Presents a comprehensive guide for mystery and detective fiction, compiling over 2,500 titles from more than 200 authors and including plot overviews, a history of the genre, and a discussion on collection development.