The Hemingway Caper
A Joe Barley Mystery
by Eric Wright
Joe Barley, full-time English professor and part-time private detective, is given a simple case: to track Jason Tyler and find proof of his adultery. But as he’s investigating, Barley stumbles across the story of a missing manuscript containing writings by a young Ernest Hemingway.
What is Tyler’s connection to the Hemingway papers? And why does Tyler’s wife insist that Barley stay on the case, long after he’s come up with the required evidence of Tyler’s infidelity?
While these questions hang over Barley, his own life is complicated by academic politics, and challenges to his monogamous relationship with his longtime partner, Carole.
Set in Toronto, The Hemingway Caper is the second book in the Joe Barley series. The first, The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn, won the prestigious Barry Award.
close this panelEric Wright is the author of numerous mystery novels, and has become known to readers for such characters as Charlie Salter and Lucy Trimble. In addition to winning four Arthur Ellis Awards, he has received the John Creasy Award for Best First Crime Novel published in England, and has been shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for his memoir, Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man. Eric lives and writes in Toronto.
close this panelEric Wright is a wonderful writer with a deft, light touch. The plot hangs together, the characters come alive. There is humour and mystery and it is a pleasure to read.
The story has Wright's usual elegance and charm, along with a delightful set of characters and a good plot."
Joe Barley is Wright's best creation since Charlie Salter and, never mind Hemingway and his papers, Wright himself is a Canadian treasure.
The Hemingway Caper fits nicely into the mode of a master craftsman of the novelgreat reading.
Light and amusing. A definite contender for the beach book pile.
well-told and a pleasure to read.
the author's bemused, behind-the-scenes explorations provide agreeable, if gentle, satire of campus politics.
Wright maintains a firm grip on the material and demonstrates an old master's ability to juggle several narrative balls at once without letting us know, till quite late in the performance which of them will eventually land with the most resounding force.
Wright, with four series on the go, is at his best in the latest in the Joe Barley seriesa plot with unusual twists, some eccentric charactgers and Joe Barley falling into one humorous situation after another.
