A search for a man armed with a rifle that hasn’t been shot since the war of 1812 leads to an investigation that takes Marc Edwards from a newspaper office into the mansions of the Family Compact, and even to the local brewery, as the clues he uncovers point closer and closer to home.

Now lieutenant in charge of security at Government House in Toronto, Marc Edwards is eager for action in both his personal and professional life. His letters to Beth Smallman in Crawford Corners have gone unanswered and writing speeches for Lieutenant Governor Francis Bond Head is not the stuff of excitement. Then, during an election speech by Bond Head, a shot fells a government minister sitting just behind him and Marc on the hustings. Marc’s troop gallops after an armed man who flees the scene, killing him when he points his rifle at Marc’s chest. Then they discover that the rifle has not been fired since the war of 1812.
Mortified by his troop’s mistake, Marc accepts the help of Horatio Cobb, one of Toronto’s three constables in its brand new police force. He also accepts the affections of Eliza Dewart-Smythe, who is almost, but not quite, as beguiling as Beth. His investigation takes him from William Lyon Mackenzie’s newspaper office into the mansions of the Family Compact, and to the local brewery, as the clues he uncovers point closer and closer to home.

Don Gutteridge is the author of more than forty books: poetry, fiction and scholarly works in educational theory and practice. He was born in Sarnia, Ontario, and raised in the nearby village of Point Edward. He graduated from Western University in 1960 with an Honours English degree, and taught high school English for seven years before moving to the Western Faculty of Education. He taught there for twenty—five years and is now Professor Emeritus. He lives in London, Ontario. In a review of his book The Way It Was, in The Western News, Kane Faucher said Gutteridge's poems have been "memorially 'lived in'" and "must negotiate a world with - and without - words…Both pleasant and haunting, we are treated to a world of velvet voices…in a memorial transfer from past to present, from present to beyond."

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