Overview

On a warm August evening in 1905, a 12-year old boy is shot in the back and killed near the Orford Mountain Railway construction site in rural Quebec. The crime is all the more shocking for being the second such murder on a railway in three days. A 14-year old had been killed in nearby Farnham very near an existing rail line. Like the murder in Farnham, the Orford Mountain Railway murder leaves the nearby communities in a state of shock and terror. The killing is puzzling in the extreme and while the police investigation eventually leads to an arrest, it soon becomes clear that the two suspects, while possibly guilty of other crimes, are definitely not the murderers. Fast forward a century to the moment the archivist of a local historical society comes across an unusual document. It is the diary of a teenage girl who chronicled the few weeks she spent with detested relatives near Melbourne Township in August 1905. More by accident than design, she provides clues that help the narrator investigate and solve the century-old case of the murder on the Orford Mountain Railway.

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9781771862462

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Fonda is a strongly visual and conversational writer who has created a very believable setting for this work. ... My final impression of Murder on the Orford Mountain Railway is that it is an entertaining read and also that it might make an engaging Young Adult semi-novel-mystery-love story for older high school students. --Sandra Stock, Quebec Heritage News The details are so precise, so well turned, that one cannot help but imagine it's all real. And a lot of it is ... So along with a great fictionalized murder mystery, the reader is privy to a fantastic history lesson about the railway system in our very own Eastern Townships --Sharin Morrissey, Montreal Review of Books midway between a piece of historical fiction and an account of true crime... it is an engaging step back in time, one that will leave readers enlightened and engaged about our forebears and the world they lived in. --Jim Napier, Ottawa Review of Books

midway between a piece of historical fiction and an account of true crime... it is an engaging step back in time, one that will leave readers enlightened and engaged about our forebears and the world they lived in. --Jim Napier, Ottawa Review of Books

Author Information

Nick Fonda is an award-winning journalist who has been documenting life in the Quebec's Eastern Townships for years. Fascinated by local history, which inspires this novel, he is the author of three books of nonfiction focusing on the Townships and the acclaimed short stories collection Principals and Other Schoolyard Bullies. He lives in Richmond, Quebec. Nick Fonda, whose journalism has earned awards, has been documenting daily life in Quebec's Eastern Townships for more than 40 years. His enduring fascination with local history forms the backdrop of his first novel The Eastern Township.

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