Asylum
A Mystery
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Martine LeDuc is the director of PR for the mayor's office in Montreal. When four women are found brutally murdered and shockingly posed on park benches throughout the city over several months, Martine's boss fears a PR disaster for the still busy tourist season, and Martine is now also tasked with acting as liaison between the mayor and the police department. The women were of varying ages, backgrounds and bodytypes and seemed to have nothing in common. Yet the macabre presentation of their bodies hints at a connection. Martine is paired with a young detective, Julian Fletcher, and together they dig deep into the city's and the country's past, only to uncover a dark secret dating back to the 1950s, when orphanages in Montreal and elsewhere were converted to asylums in order to gain more funding. The children were subjected to horrific experiments such as lobotomies, electroshock therapy, and psychotropic medication, and many of them died in the process. The survivors were supposedly compensated for their trauma by the government and the cases seem to have been settled. So who is bearing a grudge now, and why did these four women have to die?
Not until Martine finds herself imprisoned in the terrifying steam tunnels underneath the old asylum does she put the pieces together. And it is almost too late for her...in Jeannette de Beauvoir's Asylum.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Martine LeDuc, the publicity director for the city of Montreal and a wonderfully likable narrator, partners with offbeat police detective Julian Fletcher in this absorbing mystery from de Beauvoir (Murder Most Academic). As Martine and Julian look into the murders of four women found posed on park benches throughout the city over a period of months, they begin to suspect that the killings are linked to one of Montreal's most shameful scandals, the Duplessis Orphans. In the 1950s, children separated from mostly unwed mothers in the very Catholic province of Quebec were transferred from orphanages to mental hospitals as a means to secure greater funding. Inhabitants of these hellholes served as guinea pigs for experiments performed for pharmaceutical companies. Now someone is willing to kill in order to avoid opening old wounds. De Beauvoir does a fine job of evoking the ambiance of Montreal, with its fascinating neighborhoods, bilingualism, and political tensions.