Truth can often make good fiction.
Okay, first off, you have a reading assignment. I’ll wait here until you’re done.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-break-in-the-mysterious-case-of-tom-thomson-canadas-van-gogh/article1738779/
Done? Did you view the audio slideshow on the lefthand side of the first page of the article? Okay...I’ll wait while you look at that, too.
What we have here is, without a doubt, a completely realized and fantastic crime fiction novel, requiring almost no changes. Think about what a fantastic ending it would have as the narrator? protagonist? looks at the recreation of the face of Tom Thomson by the forensic artist. As a novelist (and a lazy one at that), I would love to be able to just plunk this all down and send it off to my publisher. What a story! It’s got it all, intrigue, a long unsolved mystery and a great romantic component. The only thing missing is who the murderer was (not having read the book yet, I don’t know if MacGregor goes into that) and why he/she did it.
So what do you think? If you were writing the ending to this story, would it be the person who owed Tom money, would it be someone else...or might it be Winnie because Tom refused to marry her?
But most of all, don’t you wish you’d thought up this story yourself? (And wouldn't that photograph of the skull make a great cover image?)
Rick Blechta is a Toronto author and musician. Oddly enough, each of his novels have a musician as the protagonist. Because he enjoys and plays all kinds of music, his books feature all kinds of music: blues, jazz, classical, rock. Next up is the opera world with The Fallen One coming in fall 2011. Set in Toronto, Montreal and Paris, it follows soprano Marta Hendricks as she searches for the truth about her dead husband.
His 2005 novel, Cemetery of the Nameless was a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Best Novel of the Year.
For more details, please visit rickblechta.com and Type M for Murder (http://www.rickblechta.com & http://typem4murder.blogspot.com/)
Fabulous story, Rick. Roy MacGregor said he's been working on it for forty years! I love the fact that the gov't decided to put an end to speculation, leaving the mystery of who killed TT uninvestigated and unsolved. No wonder we write mysteries.
ReplyDeleteMJ