Death by Degrees

Charlie Salter #10

by Eric Wright

Book by Wright, Eric

Genres: Mystery

310 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

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 3 out of 5]

3 Stars. Not the highlight of this 11 or 12 volume series, but a real puzzler. Parts of it require your full attention. I suspected early that it may be the type of story I call a relationship mystery. That is, it's replete with personal interplays between individuals and one of the pairings just might turn out to be crucial to resolving the crime. But which one? Poor Inspector Salter. Professor Lyall has been found murdered in his home shortly after becoming Dean of Related Studies at Bathurst College in Toronto in a hotly-contested faculty election. As an aside, this post-secondary college is fictional - why doesn't Wright use Toronto's very real George Brown College which is blocks away, or Seneca, or Humber, or Centennial? Salter's problem is that he can't dismiss the possibility that it was a random incident. At one point the clues point to an Indigenous Canadian, Henry Littledeer, but Salter keeps poking away at that faculty election. At the same time he's having to cope with the very serious illness of his father. He's been hospitalized and the prognosis is grim. Father and son have so many unresolved issues. Good story; it would make a great TV mystery. (No2025/De2025)

[Avid Series Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Death by Degrees (Charlie Salter #10) by Eric Wright is set in late 20th-century Toronto. Staff Inspector Charlie Salter has an assignment to write a paper on gambling. He cannot concentrate, because his father is in the hospital, maybe dying. He asks a friend in Homicide department for a case to work on, to keep his mind occupied. Anonymous letters were received by a recent gunshot victim, an instructor at Bathurst College. Salter sets off to investigate at the college. The victim was recently elected dean by the college board. He senses threads of discord among the college staff that could have led to violence. The faculty and staff members Salter interviews are all rather unlikable. Most are hiding secrets. His challenge is to find out which secrets are relevant to the dean's death.

Meanwhile he takes the night shifts at the hospital, alternating with his father's common-law wife May who keeps vigil in the daytime. He has turbulent feelings about his father and their relationship, desperately wanting to have a chance to 'make up' their differences before his father dies. He feels a twinge of envy that his son Seth gets along better with the cantankerous old man.

Daytimes Salter follows up on clues and checks alibis. The case drags on. This is an easy book to put down at the slightest distraction. To keep himself occupied through the long lonely hours at the hospital, Salter keeps a journal of his progress on the case. Because he has so much empty time, he is able to notice improbabilities in the interview statements, that the detectives swamped with cases did not catch. Eventually his long hours of studying evidence pay off, and he cracks the case. He forces a confrontation to gain a confession.

[Ralph · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first I've read in the series, though not the first book in the series. I thought Salter a decent detective and the mystery overall engrossing, but I felt too much time was spent on the side issue of his father's health and his checkered relationship with the old man. Wright does an excellent job with characterization, but the various professors and administrators at the college come across as almost idiotic and simple minded. However, since Wright makes a point at various junctures to explain that educators at higher institutions during the time period go to great lengths to not appear elitist, the idiocy and simple mindedness may be in a satiric vein, but it is still a little off-putting. Also a bit off-putting is the thin skein of reverse discrimination that wends its way through the story and the overt patronization, though this is mostly by the college idiots, so, again, this might be part of the author's lampooning of the system. Between Salter's family story and social commentary, the crime plot, an instructor killed apparently during the commission of a burglary, struggles to remain center stage, but Wright manages, for the most part, to keep it there and brings it to a satisfactory conclusion.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second book, I have read in the series. I love the series is set in my hometown, though it was written several years ago. At Bathurst College in Toronto, the search was on for a new Dean of Related Studies and the administration decided to keep the competition among insiders. They did not want the Dean’s position to go to someone outside the college.
We learn this information on the novel’s first page. Inspector Charlie Salter is called in when Maurice Lyall, the new Dean is discovered dead from a gunshot wound. It looks like an open and shut case of Dean Lyall killed during a burglary. But Inspector Charlie Salter, believes otherwise and decides to investigate anonymous notes warning the killer is associated with Bathurst College. An enjoyable mystery that I liked very much.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eric Wright is a mild mystery writer...you can't call him a writer of cosy style mysteries but his novels aren't filled with excessive gore or truly evil individuals.

[Joan Barton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh dear this could have been so much better!