Une affaire explosive

Charlie Salter #6

by Eric Wright

Pour sa sixème enquête, Charlie Salter doit assurer la sécurité de la princesse Royale ! La police de Toronto est sur le pied de "la" princesse royale visitera la ville sous peu et tout doit être mis en œuvre pour assurer sa sécurité. Afin de participer à l'effort collectif, le patron de Charlie Salter lui demande d'enquêter sur l'envoi de lettres de menace anonymes à cinq commerçants de Yorkville. Certains d'entre eux ont demandé à la ville d'interdire dans leur rue la présence des marchands ambulants qui, à leur avis, nuisent à leurs commerces; ces lettres sont probablement un geste de frustration d'un vendeur de camelote, pense Salter... mais la princesse s'en vient et il ne faut rien prendre à la légère !

Genres: Mystery

277 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

There is more than one author with this name in the database. Not all books on this profile belong to the same author.

Eric Wright was born in London, England and immigrated to Canada in 1951. He is the award-winning author of seventeen crime novels, including his first novel, The Night the Gods Smiled, which won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel, the Crime Writer's Association's John Creasey Award, and the City of Toronto Book Award. His memoir, Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man, about growing up poor in working-class London, was published in 1999.

Reviews

[Jack Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars. A great read and a page turner. Mainly because of the mystery - a car-bomb goes off killing the occupant of a van just minutes after a touring royal princess passed by. But also because of the locale, central Toronto where I lived for many years. It's well written and draws you into the mind of Inspector Charlie Salter of the Toronto police department as he struggles with the question of whether it was aimed at visiting royalty, unnamed but surely Diana, the Princess of Wales, or at one or more of the local shopowners in the trendy Yorkville district. Salter has difficulty this time. He loses his stability when Superintendent Orliff, Charlie's superior, announces his retirement and Charlie says to wife Annie that he'd rather retire than work for anyone else. Then there are the anonymous threatening letters received by several storeowners, ostensibly from nearby street vendors, demanding they cease their harassment. Danny Pearson, the dead man, is related to one of those storeowners but Charlie and his undercover staffer, Officer Ranovic, can't find any connections that point to the murderer. It's just a great read. (Oc2024/De2025)

[Barbara Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first review. I am a fan of what, to ME, are "well written mysteries". Elizabeth George, Reginald Hill, Peter Robinson, Louise Penny, and (sometimes) PD James. I know I am leaving out some favorites in this category. I "stumbled" into Eric Wright. I have read everything he has written in sequence about that neat guy, Charlie Salter. and I have so enjoyed the series. I so enjoy him because he is clever AND funny. I like that. AND he is not simplistic. This particular book was well done, but I think anyone interested in "Charlie", as I am, needs to start at the beginning. "The Night the Gods Smiled". http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/W_A...
Some are really 4 - 5 in my estimation and some are not. The writing is excellent and the humor is ...funny!!! ALSO the plots are ingenious as a rule. Barbara Ann

[C. (Comment, never msg). · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I read “A Body Surrounded By Water” last year, an acquisition long in coming; I did not know Eric Wright had been gone eight months. He and Howard Engel are special. They showed me Canada does not solely produce literary classics. Here are enthralling, original mysteries about Toronto and Niagara Falls; places I have been! I knew he came from England to my city, Winnipeg, as a young guy in 1951. Here, he confirmed being glad he moved and got his first jobs. He left for a masters degree in Toronto; staying because he married Valerie.

Relegating him to a "cozy mystery" pile is a mistake. People forget the "standard mystery" category; labelling anything that is not horror / graphic like that automatically. Eric's language, situations, and writing are bold and realistic. One irritant is the old-timer use of last names: "Salter" popping-up instead of "Charlie"! It isn't done for women. Their first names or "Mrs." are employed. I did enjoy “A Question Of Murder”: humour, varying between personal and work life, so much that I had five stars in mind.... until it became clear the lake family was not forming the plot after all. Crime-related mysteries are popular but I am not the average person! I prefer mysteries that are purely mysterious. I anticipated the premise of that lake family's secrets!

Along with featuring Canadians, as one himself: he had a gift for showing exactly how every case was investigated, step for step. Interest never waned and his people, from his gorgeous wife my age, to his grumpy Father, were immediately real. To Eric's family: know that I will miss him and that I was gleeful about finding two crisp second-hand books, that contain his autograph! I shall treasure them and look forward to reading all of them.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/n...

[Steven Meyers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Canadian crime novelist Eric Wright’s Inspector Charlie Salter of the Toronto police generally pokes into crimes others cannot solve. But in A Question of Murder there is no crime to solve, not at first; Salter is assigned to check out the stores and merchants of Yorkville Street in advance of a princess’s visit. But a bomb goes off and kills a man. Nothing to do with the princess, but now Salter has to investigate the fashionable neighborhood’s storekeepers and track their rivalries. Bolstered by a sane family life, Salter moves ingeniously, winningly ahead. Nothing of noir or pulp here; it’s the way Salter can read people that generally gets him his results. Wright is like a good playwright in presenting conversations and the mechanics within them, including their unspoken parts. By the end his detective achieves the solution, and we’ve been satisfyingly immersed in the company of a literate mind—and are looking forward to more.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book. Toronto police inspector Charlie Salter is called to assist the department as a backup when the Princess of Wales is scheduled to visit. One of the problems he is assigned is to deal with threatening letters that have been sent to store owners in the shopping area of Bloor Street. They have been fighting the street vendors that have taken up space on their streets and the letters threaten their stores. When a bomb explodes in a garage and the husband of one of the shop owners is killed, Charlie needs to find out if it is a threat to the Princess or the store owner. This was an interesting story and went into the minutea that police officers need to study in order to find the answers.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An entertaining read on the plane mystery which I actually read on a plane trip from Eugene to Cincinnati. A death initially appears to be linked to a much ballyhooed visit to Canada from "The Princess". But, as happens in a good mystery, there are more layers and all is not as it originally seems. An entertaining fast read.

[Yanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the story because it take place in the area where I live in Toronto, so I could imagine every person in each place described by the author.
The suspense is perfect and the author adds to his character a really good sense of humor.

[Alan (on December semi-hiatus) Teder]

In English language,Canadian,fiction,novel,crime fiction,police procedural

[Tawnni · Rating 2 out of 5]

And that's me being generous.

[Meg Lynch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not read this in French.

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this slow and not much intrique. I did like the family members though.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another enjoyable quick read. Loved the parts that involve Charlie Salter’s family especially his father. The mystery was not bad.