William Deverell

Crime novels are the new beach reads. Here are 11 of the latest mystery page-turners.

MARGARET CANNON

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

The Long-Shot Trial, William Deverell (ECW Press, 320 pages) 

This is the latest in the wonderful Arthur Beauchamp series and it’s superb. If, like me, you’ve wondered just how Beauchamp became a lawyer for the lost, Deverell fills in the backstory.

Deverell paces his story beautifully and weaves in some final surprises.

Far be it from me to say whether William Deverell’s THE LONG-SHOT TRIAL (ECW Press, 250 pp., paperback, $21.95), the ninth novel to star the quick-witted defense lawyer Arthur Beauchamp, will be his last; that said, Deverell is 87, and the book is shot through with lament and mourning.

A note from our friends at Black Bond Books:

Please join William Deverell for a reading from The Long-Shot Trial on Wednesday May 15th, 2024 @ 6:30PM - 9:00PM at our Book Warehouse Main St store (4118 Main St, Vancouver) as we launch the newest Arthur Beauchamp thriller.

This will be a double-header, with crime writer Iona Whishaw reading from her latest Lane Winslow mystery - Lightning Strikes the Silence.

Arthur Beauchamp is mortified. A revised biography of his early career as a lawyer paints him as a dissolute womanizer. So he decides to write a memoir to set the record straight as he delves deeply into a headline murder case he fought as a starry-eyed young lawyer in 1966. A trial that seemed bound to mark him as a pathetic loser.

It's easy to read them in order: Click on "Books" on the home page. Begin with Needles (at the bottom) and work your way up.

To follow the Arthur Beauchamp series, begin with The Dance of Shiva (he gets the Best Supporting Actor Award for that one), then skip up to Trial of Passion (Arthur's first Oscar-winning performance), then (as he slowly ages) April Fool (another Oscar), Kill All the Judges, Snow Job,(borth finalists for the Leacock Award), I'll See You in My Dreams, Sing a Worried Song, Whipped, and Stung.

Annie Buchanan (Reviewer) has just submitted Feedback for Kill All the Judges.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Full Text:
Kill All the Judges is a frenetic dark legal crime comedy/drama, and the third Arthur Beauchamp novel by William Deverell. Originally published in 2008, this audiobook format, read by Michael Benyaer was released 15th May 2022 by ECW Press. The book contains 332 pages in print format and is available in all formats.

This is a very dryly humorous book with a large cast of unlikable and out-of-control secondary characters and an absolutely frenetic plot with wall-to-wall drugs, mayhem, and murder. The author is unquestionably talented and adept at his craft. The writing is technically brilliant although the reader is dragged along for the ride. There were numerous places in the narrative where I was by turns disgusted by the scenes being written and simultaneously amazed at the sheer difficulty of writing the point of view and scene descriptions in any comprehensible manner.

This is my second short-listed novel for the Dashiell Hammet Award for literary excellence in crime writing in North America. Trial of Passion won my first Hammett.

Fingers are crossed.

Let me set the scene:

Dashiell, a handsome (and he knows it), jaguar-spotted, green-eyed Bengal cat, is curled on a slip-covered sofa across from me, waiting for me to finish this brief essay and continue our walk. He is a fearless hiker and likes posing on mountain ledges in the nearby Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.

We are in a log cabin, Dashiell and I. It’s my writing studio, and it’s serenaded — seasonally — by songbirds and a gurgling stream and the crackling of wood in my fire. Not to mention the frequent drumming of West Coast rain. Towering firs and cedars surround the cabin, hopefully pumping out enough oxygen to offset the carbon footprint of my not-quite-smokeless Jötul.

These three novels have been reprinted by ECWPress, and are now available in bookstores, on Audible.com and in ebook format on all platforms.

Kill All the Judges and Snow Job were finalists for the Leacock Award and I'll See You in My Dreams was afinalist for the Beat Canadian Crime Novel Award

Review clips below

Let the reading public be heard from...

This will be an irregular feature, from my collection of notes from fans (and critics), along with, when merited, my responses. (And I promise to continue my practice of responding to all such notes whether by email or social media.)

Here's a good one, just in, from Kathleen Martin

almost got banned

To: William Deverell <william.deverell@gmail.com>

"On one of the Facebook book groups I responded to a request for humorous books with Kill all the judges. I got a warning saying my post violated their code due to violent content. Geez."

Yeah, Geez. This book was shortlisted for the Leacock Humour Award. Did one of the bright lights at Facebook decide it was a How-To book?

From Julian Porter QC, Canada's pre-eminent defamation lawyer:

Stunned by Stung

Magnificent. You caught the jerkiness of Court, with its unconnected currents, twists, flubs.

I was on the dredging jury trial in Court room 6.1 for, I think, 15 months. It was a cavernous Russian praesidium court.

When I was young, judges barged in on jury addresses,but not now.

Funny, but with Covid civil juries will be eliminated. All my and your old tricks can’t even be tried with zoom hearings.

A wonderful book, just bloody wonderful. J.D. Singh places you as his favourite author!! So he should.

Thank you,
Julian

_____________________

From Professor Emeritus Michael Corcoran, Saskatoon

I want to add my voice, very belatedly, to what I am sure is a chorus of praise for “Stung.” I enjoyed the book on so many levels. For one, it is just plain entertaining. The adventures of Arthur and the gang of characters you have created are a joy to behold.

Here's a short story shortlisted for that category in the Crime Writers Awards of Excellence a few years ago. Much of it, admittedly, pinched from one of my novels. It's lighthearted, and set on my favourite fictional island: Garibaldi

Friday, September 10, 2010

After a slow and grunting ascent, Arthur’s ancient Fargo wheezes to a stop near the Garibaldi Island Community Hall. The engine won’t die, it rattles and coughs for thirty seconds, like an old man gasping his last. Arthur suspects his revered truck needs the mechanical equivalent of heart surgery but dreads rendering it to the slothful mercies of Bob Stonewell Motors. The last operation, a transmission replant, took Stoney five months.

He alights by the Fall Fair registration table and checks his cargo: fifteen varieties of fruit and vegetables, nuts and berries lined up like gleaming marbles. Prime produce of the globally warmed summer of 2010, a historic year, a comeback year — he has vowed that the Mabel Orfmeister Trophy for Most Points in Fruits and Vegetables will grace the fireplace mantle at Blunder Bay Farm.

Since he fled to the island from Vancouver a dozen years ago, intending to retire to book-lined den and garden patch, Arthur Ramsgate Beauchamp, Queen’s Counsel, has been dragged back multiple times to the courtroom wars — but no more. After a record twenty straight wins, mostly of homicides, he has vowed never to return to court — this is his new arena: the Garibaldi Fall Fair.

Click below for a YouTube version of that cocktail hour launch: including my chat about the novel, readings of three passages, a lovely musical interlude by guitar virtuoso Lester Quitzau, a question-and-answer, and some mingling of friends.

April 21, 2021

This month, we spoke with BC-based novelist William Deverell about his new book, Stung – the latest political-legal thriller in his popular series following lawyer Arthur Beauchamp. Stung is centered around Arthur’s defence of a group of environmental activists, who are accused of sabotaging an industrial pesticide plant in an effort to save the precious pollinators that its products put at risk.

Deverell, a former journalist and lawyer, lives on Pender Island, BC (in a place not too different from the fictional island home of his protagonist). In a phone interview with West Coast Communications Director Alexis Stoymenoff, he shared some of his reflections about the real-life legal and environmental issues at the heart of the story.

The legal drama in Stung surrounds a group of environmentalists working to save the bees from toxic chemicals and pesticides. What was it that sparked your interest in bees and pollinators, and the threats they face?

Well, a lot of my novels have environmental themes, and I’ve always been an activist in terms of protecting what’s left of this poor benighted planet. Really the inspiration for choosing the holocaust of bees came from my wife, Jan Kirkby, who is a biologist and an environmentalist. She told me, “You know, you’ve really got to write a book that makes a statement about the world.” We discussed topics, and I just love bees, so I thought, “Okay, let’s dig into it.” And I started doing some research. The more deeply I got into the research, the more depressed I got.

Even just recently, since I’ve written the book, I see articles – for instance, in The Guardian – a lot. There’s one headline saying that bees are now considered the most important living thing on Earth – and for good reason, because they’re the main pollinator for about 70% of the world’s crops, and yet they’re under threat. They’re a vanishing family of insects right now. Apparently, the total impact of pesticides and other pollinators doubled in a decade (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/01/toxic-impact-of-pesticides-on-bees-has-doubled-study-shows).

So anyway, for my focus, I decided on neonicotinoids – a pesticide that is particularly dangerous these days, and too widely used. I read that some of these “neonics” are 10,000 times more toxic than DDT, if you can imagine that.

[In a novel], you have to entertain people. There’s no use just hammering people over the head, or lecturing them. My books, I hope, are entertaining. There’s a mix of humour, and actually in this one, a bit of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. But my readers expect that. And I usually have a little side story going on in my not-so-mythical Gulf Island called Garibaldi.

I have a cast of funny characters who pop up from time to time, and people seem to love that. As well as the issue involving neonics, I have an issue involving a SLAPP suit against my long-time protagonist Arthur Beauchamp and a few of his friends who are fighting to preserve a park on the island.

So there’s lots of political and environmental action in this, but the main storyline of course is about an environmental activist group who have decided to stir up trouble by invading a plant that pumps out neonics in Ontario – a company they believe to be corrupt, that is absolutely poisoning the insect population of the world. It’s an act of direct action that they’ve undertaken and they risk prosecution, and they are in fact prosecuted for breaking and entering and stealing various records from the plant. These records prove that the company is in fact running afoul of the law, very much as Monsanto has been exposed of having done over the years, before it was taken over by Bayer.

The main thrust of the book is how they fight this case, on the basis of the defence of necessity. They finally drag poor Arthur Beauchamp – who is desperately trying to retire from the practice of law – out to Ontario to defend this case, which involves about seven defendants and is being massively covered by the media worldwide.

There is a fair bit of tension, a lot of twists and unexpected events happening on the way. But at the same time, I hope I’ve created a teaching moment about the danger to pollinators.

What was the most interesting thing you learned while you were researching this topic and writing the book? Was there anything that surprised you?

I had no idea that the danger to pollinators was so severe. It doesn’t get much coverage in the media. I thank The Guardian, which I subscribe to, for taking up the cudgels on this issue. When I read that neonics are not only soluble, but that they spread into our streams, into our wells, into all sorts of living plants that are not just grown on farms – and they have even affected human beings. Certainly there have been tests on animals showing that there are distinctive amounts of neonics found in their bloodstreams. And it’s been found even in baby food! So this is a crisis.

In Europe – as a result of a massive use of neonicotinoids in Germany, which caused thousands of apiarists to lose their beehives – they banned neonics, apparently widely. We’re waiting for the rest of the world to follow up. Canada has had some restrictions, but they are not doing a ban.

[NOTE: You can take action to ban harmful neonicotinoids by signing a petition by our friends at the David Suzuki Foundation here (https://davidsuzuki.org/action/canada-must-ban-neonics-now/).]

As you said, the fight to protect pollinators is not the only environmental battle that appears in the novel. Your lead character, Arthur, is also embroiled in a local campaign to protect a park on Garibaldi Island, which is at risk from a quarry development. West Coast Environmental Law gets a little cameo in this part of the story, as a source of legal support for the community group challenging the quarry approval in court.

Well yes, you do. I’m an annual contributor to West Coast Environmental Law, and I just thought, well why not give you guys a plug.

So what was your inspiration for this local BC storyline?

Actually, I think we had some support from West Coast for an issue we had on this island some time ago about a road being driven through a park here. We called upon you guys, and some intensive research was done. (We didn’t have the same kind of protest that I described in my book, in which poor Arthur Beauchamp and a bunch of his fellow islanders got busted for blocking the ferry.)

Unfortunately, we didn’t win the day on that one, but that was what inspired me to say, “Ok, well why not give WCEL a little bit of a boost in my novel, because they helped out on our island.”

Providing support for communities to use the law to protect the environment is a core part of our work at West Coast (https://www.wcel.org/programs/Environmental-Legal-Aid) – and it’s a topic that comes up in Stung. What are your thoughts on the importance of access to justice for environmental causes? How important do you think it is for there to be resources for communities to access justice and take legal action to address environmental concerns?

I think it’s very important. Between you and Ecojustice, I think, the more the merrier. I know you need the funding – probably you need a lot more funding to fight the legal battles that are so, so important. These are the most important battles of any kind that are being fought in our courts these days – the ecological battles, the battles to save our environment from the effects of global heating. It’s critical that organizations like yours have the public support and the funding to take these kinds of issues to court, because, you know, you’re going to be fighting against extremely well-funded corporations. That makes it all the more important for organizations like WCEL to be on the front lines fighting for our environment.

As you mentioned, political and environmental themes are a common thread in some of your other novels as well – not just Stung – and through adventures of Arthur Beauchamp. What is it about the interaction of law, politics and the environment that makes for a good story?

Well, let’s see – April Fool (https://www.deverell.com/books/april-fool) was another one which was strongly environmental, and it was involving a clearcut on my Garibaldi Island, and a protest, and people blockading and sitting up in trees and what not. And some of the same characters who appear in that also appear in Stung.

You know, I think it’s important to make people alive to the concerns that we all share about the environment by throwing a bit of a message into books and into novels (as long as you’re not boring people with too much science).

I hope I’m making converts to the cause. But let’s hope it’s not too late, because it’s scary what’s happening to this planet.

You can join William Deverell for a virtual launch of Stung on Earth Day, April 22, 2021 at 5pm PT. The online cocktail-hour event will feature a reading and Q&A, plus a musical interlude by guitar virtuoso Lester Quitzau.

Stung is available for purchase online and in store – check out your local independent book seller for more information.

Here's what our Executive Director & Senior Counsel Jessica Clogg had to say about the book:

“In the face of one of the existential environmental challenges of our day, Deverell’s larger than life eco-activists and their lawyers fly into battle. Their tactics may be fictional, but the environmental harm is real. Get ready for a wild ride and hope that Beauchamp wins the day, for the bees and for all of us.”

Author: Alexis Stoymenoff - Communications Director

David Suzuki, scientist, broadcaster, author, activist. and a founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, has some thoughtful words to say about Stung and about the wilful blindness we as a species suffer over the global climate crisis:

"The great boast of our species is that we are intelligent yet we seem unable to deal with the facts of environmental degradation. Bill Deverell’s Stung provides a powerful insight into why. Read this book and find out!"

In an email to me, he continued:

photo: Plummer with Brian Dennehy in Inherit the Wind on Broadway

I felt deeply honoured (and a little blown away) when the great Christopher Plummer agreed to play a major role in my screenplay adaptation of Mindfield, my 1990s thriller inspired by the CIA-sponsored mind control program secretly run out of Montreal.

Breaking news for Beauchamp fans:

I have just inked a contract with my aggressive, proudly Canadian (and obviously shrewd) publisher, ECWPress, to publish in print, online, and audio formats the three Arthur Beauchamp novels that have languished for the last few years in that infernal region known as books-out-of-print.

Kill All the Judges, Snow Job, and I'll See You in My Dreams will appear on bookstore shelves by early autumn, 2021, and, when added to my March release, Stung, will complete the Beauchamp saga to date. (Another is in the oven.)

Publisher’s Weekly has received an advance copy of Stung, and here's their Review of January 25, 2021:

Occasionally, we search for ourselves online (admit it, you do it too) and as I scrolled one day through my favourite search engine (not Google), the lines in the "read more" link below popped up -- mysteriously, for I have no memory of having spoken these words in 1968. But I'm sure they're mine (they sound of the views of a presumptuous, young, radical trial lawyer named Bill Deverell only five years out of law school).

I mourn his death.

As a young reader of spy thrillers, I voraciously consumed John le Carré's early novels. I was bowled away by The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and A Small Town in Germany, and later, of course, Tinker, Tailor and the whole Smiley series.

Interestingly, he didn't seek out the fame he deserved as not just an author of thrillers but as a master of fine literary prose. He refused to accept nominations for literary awards and declined knighthood, and had been quoted as being "suspicious of the literary world."

Many skilled writers of crime fiction would probably agree with that, but not say it out loud.

Unhappily, le Carré's later novels began to pale on me, and this review I wrote for the Globe some years ago, explains why:

“Any resemblance to persons living or dead…” 

Though I practised mainly as a criminal defence counsel, I was on occasion retained by the Attorney-General of British Columbia to prosecute homicide trials, some of which attracted wide public attention.

The trial featured in the opening section of this novel roughly recreates one of them, an alleged thrill killing in Vancouver of a lonely down-and-outer.

My Paean to My Gulf Island...My Island, My Muse: A Brief Memoir

Published in the collection, Love of the Salish Sea Islands, Mother Tongue Press

As I compose these notes, the bells have rung in the new year of 2019, which may or may not be worth celebrating, given the perilous state of our planet. I find more comfort in raising a glass to the past, because this year marks my fortieth anniversary living on a little sylvan island—six miles long and three wide—called North Pender.

The reward for my staying power is that I have finally attained the lofty rank of old-timer. There is a higher class, to which it is hopeless to aspire, of seniors born or raised here. And there are several levels of lesser nobility: full-time residents, weekend cottagers, visitors, vacation renters and, of lowest rank, the yahoos who think it’s okay to bomb around on country roads tossing beer cans and plastic wrappers.

"A bitingly funny whodunit." Maclean's

"Kill All the Lawyers is clever, amusing, laced with black humour and viciously accurate depictions of lawyers and judges." Toronto Star.

And a 2020 review squib from the New York Journal of Books:

“Filled with biting wit and smart dialogue, with a twist of an ending the diehard mystery reader won’t see coming—and an epilogue featuring the most ironic surprise of all.”

Here's a thoughtful review by the late, great Robin Skelton, one of Canada's foremost poets and teachers of literature: