"This absorbing, suspenseful novel-in-stories reveals the fascinating complexities of fifteen murder cases from the past."
Recommended for lovers of literary mysteries and historical novels, Edward Brown’s The Way of Transgressors is detective fiction done differently, taking the form of fifteen short stories that tell the contemporaneous tales of fifteen murder cases through the lens of a 2007 investigation. Amounting to an innovative novel-in-stories, the writing is rich, compelling and commanding, with the cases spanning 1872 to 1930, laying bare all walks of life, and many motives for murder.
It started with a skull. A skull evacuated from the yard of a Toronto jail in which murderers were hanged: “There were likely more remains here…What are their stories? Interesting things happened here, and I’d like to discover what”. Thus readers are immediately drawn into the novel, with the fifteen cases presented through evocative narrative descriptions, accounts of trials, and the sketches of Detective George Porter as he investigates the crimes. Though episodic, with each case distinct and richly detailed, Brown has done a brilliant job of integrating the stories, and The Way of Transgressors is a brilliantly enthralling and often arresting read.
| Primary Genre | Crime and Mystery |
| Other Genres: |
Fifteen murderers buried in the yard of the jail where they were hanged. A detective haunted by their crimes. The facts are true. Their stories might be.
Mysteries to be solved, lives to be imagined, crimes to be dissected.
From 1872 to 1930, fifteen murderers were buried in what had been the exercise yard of the old Toronto Don Jail. Their stories are interwoven with that of Detective George Porter, who sketches their faces in pen and ink as compulsively as he investigates their crimes.
Influenced by a childhood event that sparks a fascination with miscreants and the law, George Porter begins his career as an idealistic eighteen-year-old constable. Then he brushes the dirt from the face of a newborn babe, buried alive—how does that not change a man? The criminals he encounters might say he’s a hard case, but just. Except when he isn’t.
The Way of Transgressors features in the following genres: Crime and Mystery, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Historical crime and mysteries, Crime and Mystery, Fiction, Historical crime and mysteries
The Way of Transgressors is available in Paperback
The Way of Transgressors was written by Edward Brown and published by Tidewater Press
The Way of Transgressors has 282 pages
£11.69
