White Stone Day by John Maclachlan Gray

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: John MacLachlan Gray
• Title: White Stone Day (Edmund Whitty Series)
• Publisher: ‎ St. Martin's Minotaur Books; First U.S. Edition (November 1, 2005)
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover – 285 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 0312282931
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0312282936
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.25 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 6.36 x 1.11 x 9.52 inches
• Book Condition: New / Like New – Excellent
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Edition: First U.S. Edition

Synopsis:

Edmund Whitty, a London newspaper correspondent who can usually be counted upon for crisp and lurid copy, has fallen upon lean times. After his triumphant exposé of a notorious serial killer, he has inexplicably lost his knack for sensational reporting. Broke and desperate, he seizes upon a generous offer from a mysterious American to discredit a quack psychic. But how, he ends up wondering uneasily, does the psychic know so much about a scandal involving Whitty's late brother?

When the psychic is brutally murdered, Whitty finds himself accused of the crime and thrown into Milbank prison, the most bizarre institution of its kind in England. Help comes unexpectedly from "the Captain," a gangster not known for charity work. To save his own skin, Whitty must find the men responsible for the disappearance of the Captain's young niece, Eliza.

Whitty's search takes him to Oxford, where he meets the brilliant and eccentric Reverend William Boltbyn, a renowned children's author who delights in playing croquet, devising elaborate stories, and taking artistic photographs of little girls. There he uncovers a looking-glass world, the dark side of Victoriana, and the murder of innocence.

John MacLachlan Gray, who evoked "the mean streets and byways of 1852 London with a skill worthy of Dickens" (Publishers Weekly) in The Fiend in Human, spins an even more irresistible tale of dark secrets behind the facade of Victorian respectability.

About the Author:

John MacLachlan Gray, OC (born John Howard Gray; 26 September 1946) is a Canadian writer-composer-performer for stage, TV, film, radio and print. He is best known for his stage musicals and for his two seasons as a satirist on CBC TV's The Journal, as well as an author, speaker and social critic on cultural-political issues.

Born in Ottawa, Ontario, and raised in Nova Scotia, Gray obtained a B.A. at Mount Allison University, and an M.A. at the University of British Columbia. While attending the latter, he founded Tamahnous Theatre, and served as its director from 1971 to 1974. He then joined Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Ontario, where he began writing and composing for the stage. His first musical was "18 Wheels," about truck drivers.

In the late 1990s, Gray became a newspaper columnist, contributing weekly pieces on cultural politics to the Vancouver Sun and The Globe and Mail. In the early 2000s he contributed a column to Western Living Magazine called "O For the Love of Dog," in which he wrote about his dog Gus.

Around that time he abandoned the theatre in favour of the novel – in a series of thrillers set in post-modern Vancouver, mid-19th century England and the United States before the Civil War. As with Billy Bishop Goes to War, Gray casts an ironic contemporary eye on imagined historical events.

He is the recipient of a Golden Globe, and the Governor General's Medal. In 2000, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for "his contribution to Canada's cultural landscape". He holds honorary doctorates from Dalhousie University and Mount Allison University.

John Gray lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his wife Beverlee. They have two sons, Zachary (a musician and actor) and Ezra ( a visual artist).