Matt’s Reviews > I'll See You in My Dreams > Status Update

While much of the novel is told in a flashback, the biography aspect that is overlaid and used to tease out details of the original case is seen as the impetus for the appeal that Beauchamp undertakes, decades after his client has served time for the crime. The reader is able to spend time with the legal-minded Beauchamp and watch as he meanders around with characters series readers know well. How will it all go?!

As Beauchamp prepares to go to trial, he soon learns that 1960s Canada is no place for a minority to seek a fair and balanced trial. Yet, here they are and the case must proceed. With evidentiary holes the size of Toronto, the case proceeds. Witnesses are less than sure of what they saw and reports are contradicted at every turn. Even the Crown is presenting a less than stellar case, but the outcome seems determined.

Forced to peel back some of the preconceived notions he had about his former professor, Beauchamp learns some less savoury pieces of the story. He is also trying, in early 1960s British Columbia (and Canada?) to wrestle with the racial hierarchy of non-Caucasians and how they are seen, which surely includes the residential school programming that was rampant at the time. Might racial resentment been a motive?

Deverell turns the tables on this book, layering both the biography hinted at in the previous novel and a long flashback sequence based on Arthur Beauchamp's first murder trial. A Professor of Classics is slain, apparently by his yard hand, who happens to be Native American (this is the early 1960s, when labels are much different). Beauchamp seeks to parse through the reports while being lured by his 2nd chair.