Free Reign
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Rosemary Aubert |
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| Subtitle | An Ellis Portal Mystery |
| Publisher | Bridge Works |
| Honors | |
| The offbeat sleuth in this novel is Ellis Portal, once an esteemed judge, who was himself convicted of a felony and disgraced. He now lives as a vagrant in the river valley that is a wilderness preserve running through the heart of the city of Toronto. One day, while working on his hidden vegetable garden, he unearths a severed human hand. On that hand is a ring that Ellis recognizes. Thirty years before, on the day he became a lawyer, he and four of his companions entered into a pact that was sealed by just such a ring. All the participants were white. The… | |
The offbeat sleuth in this novel is Ellis Portal, once an esteemed judge, who was himself convicted of a felony and disgraced. He now lives as a vagrant in the river valley that is a wilderness preserve running through the heart of the city of Toronto.
One day, while working on his hidden vegetable garden, he unearths a severed human hand. On that hand is a ring that Ellis recognizes. Thirty years before, on the day he became a lawyer, he and four of his companions entered into a pact that was sealed by just such a ring. All the participants were white. The hand is black.
Ellis’ search to identify the victim and investigate the murder the severed hand must represent takes him back into the world that has cast him out. As he inches closer to solving the mystery, he senses he is being stalked. Then one of those who shared information with him is killed, another vanishes. Ellis discovers that one of the city’s most prominent attorneys appears to be running a conspiracy that relies on the secret use of questionable medical procedures. Both the attorney and his wife were closely intertwined with Ellis’ past. Ellis makes his way to the attorney’s office-tower suite, confronting him there with his evidence in a dramatic, moving climax. It involves the loves of the present and the past—and a startling solution to the mystery.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Ellis Portal, hero of Rosemary Aubert’s intelligent mystery Free Reign, is not your average P.I. Once a lawyer and a judge, Portal fell from grace, landing first in a mental ward and then in jail before ending up on the streets. Still, life as a bum hasn’t dulled Portal’s investigative wits, and when he discovers a severed hand wearing a ring identical to one he and four other friends also own, he finds himself back in the fray and on the trail of a killer.
