The Massey Murder

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year An Amazon Top 100 Book of the Year Shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize Longlisted for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction A scandalous crime, a sensational trial, a surprise verdict—the true story of Carrie Davies, the maid who shot a Massey In February 1915, a member of one of Canada’s wealthiest families was shot and killed on the front porch of his home in Toronto as he was returning from work. Carrie Davies, an 18-year-old domestic servant, quickly confessed. But who was the victim here? Charles “Bert” Massey, a scion of a famous family, or the frightened, perhaps mentally unstable Carrie, a penniless British immigrant? When the brilliant lawyer Hartley Dewart, QC, took on her case, his grudge against the powerful Masseys would fuel a dramatic trial that pitted the old order against the new, wealth and privilege against virtue and honest hard work. Set against a backdrop of the Great War in Europe and the changing face of a nation, this sensational crime is brought to vivid life for the first time. As in her previous bestselling book, Gold Diggers—which was made into a Discovery Channel miniseries entitled “Klondike”—multi-award-winning historian and biographer Charlotte Gray has created a captivating narrative rich in detail and brimming with larger-than-life personalities, as she shines a light on a central moment in our past.

'Excruciatingly powerful' ANTONY BEEVOR 'A brilliant, harrowing, powerful novel' DAILY MAIL 'Faulks is a prodigiously talented writer' NEW YORK TIMES In the black of night, a woman lands on the fields of Occupied France. Charlotte Grey is on a mission for the British government to deliver a message and must shed her identity to blend into the small town of Lavaurette. But Charlotte has her own secret, her lover, airman Peter Gregory is missing in action, and she will risk everything to find him. A million-copy bestseller, Charlotte Gray is enthralling story of love, deceit and courage, and a classic of spy literature.

A legally-minded sleuth takes to the streets of 1920s Bombay in a fascinating new mystery.

For over a year, Railroad Bill eluded sheriffs, private detectives hired by the L&N line, and bounty hunters who traveled across the country to match guns with the legendary desperado. The African American outlaw was wanted on multiple charges of robbery and murder, and rumor had it that he stole from the rich to give to the poor. He terrorized busy train lines from east of Mobile to the Florida Panhandle, but as soon as the lawmen got close, he disappeared into the bayous and pine forests--until one day his luck ran out, and he was gunned down inside a general store in Atmore, Alabama. Little is known about Railroad Bill before his infamy--not his real name or his origins. His first recorded crime, carrying a repeating rifle without a license, led him into a gunfight with a deputy and made him a wanted man throughout Florida in 1894. His most celebrated escape--a five-day foot chase with scores of men and several bloodhounds--led to tales of Railroad's supernatural ability to transmogrify into an animal or inanimate object at will. As his crimes progressed from robbing boxcars to wounding trainmen to murdering sheriffs, more and more reward money was offered for his capture--dead or alive. Today, Railroad Bill is the subject of many folk songs popularized by singers such as Paul McCartney, Taj Mahal, Gillian Welch, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot. But who was he? Where did he come from? What events led to his murderous spree? And why did some view him as a hero? In Railroad Bill, Larry Massey separates fact from myth and teases out elusive truths from tall tales to ultimately reveal the man behind the bandit's mask.

Tresia was murdered on March 21, 1992. She was in her BMW in a gas station parking lot, attempting to use a payphone to call her husband, who was three blocks away in his office building. Three gang members approached her car. One of those killers brandished a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun. He then shot her, at point-blank range, through her driver window. The fired shot blew a hole through her driver's window and entered her body (just below her left arm and shoulder), exploding her heart. We were later informed that her husband, only one minute away, in his railroad employment office, drove to the gas station parking lot where Tresia was shot, removed her body from her car, then placed her in his truck, driving her the furthest distance until she died on the way to the nearest hospital, Jefferson Regional Medical Center, where she was pronounced DOA in the emergency room. Years of doubt, anger, and grief have crippled my family, leaving us with unanswered questions, hurt, and enormous loss. We felt that no one understood what we were going through. It seemed to us no one cared, and the ones that acted as if they did slowly fell away like leaves on a tree approaching fall season. We felt ostracized and discarded, like we had a disease. Even those who were close to us avoided our family. We felt very alone and isolated. We were suffering. We were grieving. We had no one to tell us what was about to unfold in our lives or how Tresia's murder was going to change the course of our lives. We didn't understand the anger that we were feeling. Each and every task we set out to accomplish seemed to have stumbling blocks in front of them. The Christian family we had once known and grown to love over the years washed away like waves in the sea and disappeared from our memories as well because they did not reach out to us in our time of mourning. This was an added loss to us because we believed they loved us, would be there for us if we ever needed them, and that they cared about us. Instead, they acted afraid, like they did not want to be involved. Some of my former friends acted as though they were thinking my family was cursed, and even stated in our presence that we possibly did something to anger God and that we were being punished, that perhaps God was unleashing his wrath on us. This couldn't have been further from the truth. Murdered without Cause was written with the sole intention(s) of sharing Tresia's story to help others in overcoming their loss of a loved one by murder. This book was also written to restore peace in my family to obtain a sense of closure that we never knew existed and to establish unspeakable justice by assisting survivors. The only way to cope with any loss by murder is to continue to pray and seek God's divine purpose for your own life. By reaching out to you, the survivor of a loved one murdered, I want you to know that you are not alone. There was no book written, in 1992, that could tell us how we were going to feel or what we were going to go through. With this writing, my wish is to guide you through the stages of shock, anger, and grief, so you are able to rediscover a hope that moves you forward out of your sorrow, courage to lift your journey and a vision to claim a new purpose in life.

Bombay’s first female lawyer, Perveen Mistry, is compelled to bring justice to the family of a murdered female Parsi student just as Bombay’s streets erupt in riots to protest British colonial rule. Sujata Massey is back with this third installment to the Agatha and Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning series set in 1920s Bombay. November 1921. Edward VIII, Prince of Wales and future ruler of India, is arriving in Bombay to begin a fourmonth tour. The Indian subcontinent is chafing under British rule, and Bombay solicitor Perveen Mistry isn’t surprised when local unrest over the royal arrival spirals into riots. But she’s horrified by the death of Freny Cuttingmaster, an eighteen-year-old female Parsi student, who falls from a second-floor gallery just as the prince’s grand procession is passing by her college. Freny had come for a legal consultation just days before her death, and what she confided makes Perveen suspicious that her death was not an accident. Feeling guilty for failing to have helped Freny in life, Perveen steps forward to assist Freny’s family in the fraught dealings of the coroner’s inquest. When Freny’s death appears suspicious, Perveen knows she can’t rest until she sees justice done. But Bombay is erupting: as armed British secret service march the streets, rioters attack anyone with perceived British connections, and desperate shopkeepers destroy their own wares so they will not be targets of racial violence. Can Perveen help a suffering family when her own is in danger?

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.

The highly anticipated follow-up to the critically acclaimed novel The Widows of Malabar Hill. India, 1922: It is rainy season in the lush, remote Sahyadri mountains, where the princely state of Satapur is tucked away. A curse seems to have fallen upon Satapur’s royal family, whose maharaja died of a sudden illness shortly before his teenage son was struck down in a tragic hunting accident. The state is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur’s two maharanis, the dowager queen and her daughter-in-law. The royal ladies are in a dispute over the education of the young crown prince, and a lawyer’s counsel is required. However, the maharanis live in purdah and do not speak to men. Just one person can help them: Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female lawyer. Perveen is determined to bring peace to the royal house and make a sound recommendation for the young prince’s future, but she arrives to find that the Satapur palace is full of cold-blooded power plays and ancient vendettas. Too late, she realizes she has walked into a trap. But whose? And how can she protect the royal children from the palace’s deadly curse?