Under the dragon's tail

Maureen Jennings's first mystery novel, Except the Dying, startled readers and reviewers with its evocation of the Toronto of a hundred years ago.Dolly Merishaw is a midwife and an abortionist, who in both instances carries out her craft in secrecy. To her come every level of the city's women, either to rid themselves of their unwanted pregnancies or to give birth to the children who for one reason or another they cannot acknowledge.Dolly is a slut and a drunkard. She is cruel to the two small boys who live with her and her deaf and mute daughter. If the opportunity presents itself, she's not above a clumsy effort at blackmail. When she is found beaten to death, once again meet William Murdoch, the eminently likable police detective of the author's first book. We step into the fullness of the life he leads beyond his very competent police work. He still grieves for his fiance, who died in a typhoid epidemic a month before their wedding date. He trains for the bicycle race that he hopes will make him champion of the department. He takes ballroom dancing lessons in the hope of assuaging his loneliness, practicing new steps in his lonely room. And he tries to subdue the admiration he feels for a fellow lodger, a young widow with a small son.

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