Justin Fowles, confused patriot, geriatric lover, late-blooming romantic, is aging restlessly in Prospect, on the south coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Justin rages at his banishment from the RCMP and is sure the Force still spies on him; he suspects the nearby Combat College is an outpost of American expansionism; he fears for his relationship with Annabelle Mac Kinley, the much younger publisher of the local newspaper.
Whether anti-Quebecois or anti-American or simply a Canadian nationalist is open to question, but Justin’s world is turned upside down when he finds the nude murdered body of a beautiful young woman floating in Prospect Inlet. The body disappears, and in his search for it he loses Annabel and comes face to face with his troubled past. In his perplexity the search for a murder victim becomes a quest for some idealised vision of youth and fulfilment, which ends in a climax as shocking as it is unexpected.
About the author
James Jackson dropped out of the University of British Columbia in 1941 to
join the Royal Canadian Air Force. He completed a tour of operations in
Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He returned to UBC and went on to a Master of Fine Arts degree with the
Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. He returned to Canada to teach
at the University of Western Ontario, followed by appointments at the Air
Force College in Toronto and with the University of Toronto. During his time
in Toronto, Baxter Publishing published To the Edge of Morning. His final
job was as University Registrar of Carleton University in Ottawa, where he
also conducted a seminar in creative writing.
Visit the author’s website at www.jaxonbooks.ca.
Reviews
From the zine, the Salt Spring Island TATLER (www.saltspring.com/tatler/):
‘Justin Fowles is not simply good writing, it is great writing. Fluent, fluid, graceful prose so smoothly achieved that one must ascribe to it the description ‘the art that conceals art’. One of our favourites is the fresh, individual work of Mordecai Richler. . . none better than his final novel, Barney’s Version. Justin Fowles is as different from Richler’s work as the mind might conjure. Yet it is our view that [both books] share the honoiur of being equally at the height of their field. They gift us with the best we can wish for books, delightful reading.’
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