Sylvia Maultash Warsh
Author of the award winning
Dr. Rebecca Temple mystery series
Books
To Die in Spring
A Novel
Finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel
Dr. Rebecca Temple has just returned to practice in an old converted house in the Kensington Market area of Toronto, six months after the death of her artist husband, when she’s confronted with the violent murder of a patient she had earlier diagnosed as paranoid. Sylvia Warsh’s accomplished first novel explores the decades-old deceptions and plots that go back to World War Two Poland and underlie the murder of Goldie. Even as Rebecca struggles with guilt over the misdiagnosis which may have led to her patient’s death, she becomes the killer’s next target.
"To Die in Spring is Torontonian Sylvia Warsh's first published mystery and it's a good deal better than the work of many veterans. It's also set up as a kickoff to a promising series featuring Dr Rebecca Temple, a young widow recovering from the early death of her beloved artist husband. The novel is set in 1979, which puts it in temporal reach of the Second World War as well as the horrors of Argentina, where many Nazis and some surviving Jews fled after the war. Warsh handles deftly the now-historical issues, putting them into the terms and mouths of characters who display the full range of greed and obsession required to play out her plot.
Warsh does a fine job of unwrapping mysterious identities until both sins and crimes lie satisfactorily revealed."
Joan Barfoot, London Free Press
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Find Me Again
A Novel
Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Paperback Original, short-listed for the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original and for Best Historical Mystery
Still coming to terms with the death of her husband, Dr. Rebecca Temple tries to continue her practice and carry on with life as usual. She meets a charming Polish count who has written a historical novel based on his own family. During a visit to his home, she discovers a murder and soon realizes that the count’s manuscript may contain clues to the killer’s identity.
Frustrated by the inaction of a skeptical police department, she scours the manuscript for answers. As she reads, she journeys back to Enlightenment Europe and uncovers the true story of a love affair between the girl who would become Catharine the Great, and the young man who would become the last king of Poland.
In this eagerly anticipated sequel to the acclaimed To Die in Spring, Sylvia Maultash Warsh engages readers in an enthralling mystery that spans three centuries.
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Season of Iron
A Novel
The newest Dr Rebecca Temple book is set alternately in 1979 Toronto and 1930s Berlin. In Toronto, Rebecca follows a trail that begins when Birdie, the schizophrenic homeless woman she is trying to help, is killed. From the German fencing instructor in whose backyard Birdie lived to the Egyptian physician in town to talk up the new drug he is developing from snake venom, nobody is who they appear to be. Strangely, the two men seem to know each other, although neither will say how.
Alternating chapters follow a Jewish family, the Eisenbaums, during the Nazi rise to power and the gradual stripping away of the rights of Jews in Germany. The youngest child, Frederika, becomes a doctor against all odds. But as the Nazi grip tightens, she loses the right to practice and is finally sent to a concentration camp. Rebecca’s and Frederika’s stories connect in the startling conclusion.
Shortlisted for a Relit Award
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The Queen of Unforgetting
A Novel
Chosen by Project Bookmark Canada for a plaque in Little Lake Park, Midland, Ontario, where the book takes place
Mel Montrose is a beautiful blonde grad student with a secret. Two secrets. We only know what she wants us to know. Until she is forced to run from an obsessed admirer into the arms of her family whom she has been avoiding. Then the first secret is revealed and we understand some of her motives.
The second secret involves the admirer and his role in her evolving literary career. Mel approaches the legendary Northrop Frye to supervise her thesis: she will be dissecting an epic poem about the 17th century Jesuit, the giant Jean de Brébeuf.
She spends the summer at the reconstructed mission, Sainte Marie among the Hurons, to soak up the atmosphere for her thesis, but finds more than she is looking for, including a giant actor who will play the Jesuit in a production at the site. Both of them struggle with identity, and eventually, the insistent admirer who brings all their stories to a climax.
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Best Girl
A Novella
Amanda Moss is a young hairstylist with ambitions to become a musician and play in a band. She was adopted at age three after her parents were killed in a car crash. At least that's what her adoptive mother Shelley has always told her. Shelley is also a hairdresser. But beyond that, mother and daughter don't see eye to eye on much.
Then one day Amanda's life changes dramatically when a stranger shows up and tells her a very different story about her parents. Her real mother has just died of cancer while serving a life sentence for the murder of Amanda's father. Suddenly Amanda feels her whole life has been a lie. Was her mother really guilty? When she also discovers that her father was in a successful rock-and-roll band when he was killed, she goes looking for former band members to try to find out what really happened so many years before. In the process she learns some unpleasant truths about her family. She also learns that you can love and hate someone at the same time.