Short-listed for the 2002 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel
Dr. Rebecca Temple has just returned to practice in an old converted house in the Kensington Market area of Toronto, six months after the death of her artist husband, when she’s confronted with the violent murder of a patient she had earlier diagnosed as paranoid. Sylvia Warsh’s accomplished first novel explores the decades-old deceptions and plots that go back to World War Two Poland and underlie the murder of Goldie. Even as Rebecca struggles with guilt over the misdiagnosis which may have led to her patient’s death, she becomes the killer’s next target.

Sylvia Maultash Warsh's profile page

• Short-listed, Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel

Sylvia Maultash Warsh was born in Stuttgart, Germany, and immigrated to Canada when she was four. Her parents, both born in Krakow, are survivors of the Holocaust. Sylvia grew up listening to her mother's stories and these sparked her interest in history - especially that of the Second World War. She attended the University of Toronto, receiving a BA and an MA in Linguistics. She attended the Banff Centre Advanced Writing Studio. Currently, she teaches creative writing to seniors for the Toronto District School Board and is a founding member of the Toronto chapter of Sisters in Crime. Sylvia lives in Toronto with her husband, a psychiatrist (also her consultant for any medical information she requires for her physician-protagonist, Rebecca Temple). They have two children.

...To Die in Spring is Torontonian Sylvia Warsh's first published mystery and it's a good deal better than the work of many veterans. It's also set up as a kickoff to a promising series featuring Dr. Rebecca Temple, a young widow recovering from the early death of her beloved artist husband.

...The novel is set in 1979, which puts it in temporal reach of the Second World War as well as the horrors of Argentina, where many Nazis and some surviving Jews fled after the war. Warsh handles fairly deftly the now-historical issues, putting them into the terms and mouths of characters who display the full range of greed and obsession required to play out her plot.

...Warsh, who teaches creative writing to seniors in Toronto, does a fine job of unwrapping mysterious identities until both sins and crimes lie satisfactorily revealed.

The London Free Press

This first novel has a good plot and plenty of good writing.

Globe and Mail

somehow Warsh manages to pull off the combination of of oppressed and oppressors, while adding in losses of love and life.

Edmonton Journal

Warsh does a fine job of unwrapping mysterious identities until both sins and crimes lie satisfactorily revealed.

London Free Press