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Fiction Literary

An Act of Injustice

A Novel

by (author) Ray Argyle

Publisher
Mosaic Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2017
Category
Literary, General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771612296
    Publish Date
    Apr 2017
    List Price
    $24.95

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Description

A bride, a groom, and a lover. Each with secrets from their past that when exposed, will change their lives forever. One will die, another will hang, and the survivor will begin an obsessive twenty—year odyssey to discover the truth. Three people caught up in the harsh class differences and religious and racial prejudices of Victorian Canada, where a vast new territory — the "Queen's Bush" — is being opened to settlement in Ontario's Georgian Bay country.
Inspired by the true lives of Rosannah Leppard and Cook Teets, real people who lived and loved, An Act of Injustice follows disgruntled newspaperman Leonard Babington in a combination courtroom drama, murder mystery, and a meditation on the moral malaise of Victorian Canada. His obsession to find the killer plunges him into the labyrinth world of Ottawa power politics, the salons of a smug and self—satisfied "Toronto the Good," and the licentiousness of the city's Insane Asylum.
Ray Argyle achieves literary distinction and storytelling mastery in this Canadian historical novel that brings the urgency of today's headlines to the struggle for romance, justice and equality in a young Canada making its way into the 20th Century.

About the author

Ray Argyle is a journalist, the author of several books of biography and political history, and the recipient of a Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal for contributions to Canadian life. During his long association with France, he has spent many years tracking the political careers of Charles de Gaulle and his successors. He lives in Kingston, Ontario.

Ray Argyle's profile page

User Reviews

A true murder mystery

Here there is more than meets the eye. Contained within are memories of our collective unconscious woven into a richly detailed account of life and times in nineteenth century rural Ontario. R. A. recounts the fascinating chain of events following the death of a young woman and the man accused of her murder.
Thoroughly researched and wonderfully descriptive, this book is a great read for those who love murder mysteries and historical novels.

An Act Of Injustice

By Barry Francis on March 27, 2017
An Act of Injustice, a novel by Ray Argyle, explores a 134-year-old cold case involving Grey County Ontario native Cook Teets, who the author believes was wrongfully hanged in 1884 for murdering his wife Rosannah.

Teets, thirty years his wife’s senior, is caught up in a web of incriminating circumstances surrounding his wife’s death from apparent strychnine poisoning. He is just one of several persons of interest in the killing.

The book’s narrative is centered around a newspaperman who is infatuated with Rosannah and whose diligent investigation ultimately leads to the identity of the real killer twenty years after Teet’s execution.

It’s a carefully researched historical novel that paints a vivid picture of Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author sheds light on a justice system unfairly tilted against the accused, Canadian politics of the time, nasty religious prejudice and insane asylums that sought to indefinitely confine “hysterical women.”

The book is a real spellbinder that leaves the reader guessing about the killer’s identity until the final pages. It’s definitely worth a read.
Barry Francis

An Act Of Injustice

By Barry Francis on March 27, 2017
An Act of Injustice, a novel by Ray Argyle, explores a 134-year-old cold case involving Grey County Ontario native Cook Teets, who the author believes was wrongfully hanged in 1884 for murdering his wife Rosannah.

Teets, thirty years his wife’s senior, is caught up in a web of incriminating circumstances surrounding his wife’s death from apparent strychnine poisoning. He is just one of several persons of interest in the killing.

The book’s narrative is centered around a newspaperman who is infatuated with Rosannah and whose diligent investigation ultimately leads to the identity of the real killer twenty years after Teet’s execution.

It’s a carefully researched historical novel that paints a vivid picture of Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author sheds light on a justice system unfairly tilted against the accused, Canadian politics of the time, nasty religious prejudice and insane asylums that sought to indefinitely confine “hysterical women.”

The book is a real spellbinder that leaves the reader guessing about the killer’s identity until the final pages. It’s definitely worth a read.
Barry Francis

An Act Of Injustice

By Barry Francis on March 27, 2017
An Act of Injustice, a novel by Ray Argyle, explores a 134-year-old cold case involving Grey County Ontario native Cook Teets, who the author believes was wrongfully hanged in 1884 for murdering his wife Rosannah.

Teets, thirty years his wife’s senior, is caught up in a web of incriminating circumstances surrounding his wife’s death from apparent strychnine poisoning. He is just one of several persons of interest in the killing.

The book’s narrative is centered around a newspaperman who is infatuated with Rosannah and whose diligent investigation ultimately leads to the identity of the real killer twenty years after Teet’s execution.

It’s a carefully researched historical novel that paints a vivid picture of Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author sheds light on a justice system unfairly tilted against the accused, Canadian politics of the time, nasty religious prejudice and insane asylums that sought to indefinitely confine “hysterical women.”

The book is a real spellbinder that leaves the reader guessing about the killer’s identity until the final pages. It’s definitely worth a read.
Barry Francis

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