The setting for Linda Leith’s second novel, The Tragedy Queen, is beautiful Pointe-Claire, Quebec. Vince Carlson has just breezed into this bedroom community on his Harley Davidson to install himself in a rented house, like a fox among the chickens. A disbarred lawyer and professional fraud artist, Vince is well known to the police, and the ladies of Pointe-Claire are about to meet a man quite different from their husbands, who return home every weekday on the 5:16 commuter train.
Signature Editions, 1995
ISBN: 0-921833-37-7
“On opening The Tragedy Queen I was immediately intrigued. ‘What interests Vince is the affluent middle-aged woman who’s already half in love with danger.’ I want to know more about a man who sees women in this way, more about such women. It is a delightful frolic, at its best witty and entertaining. At times Leith’s dry, observant humour reminded me of Carol Shields.”
– Quill & Quire, 1995
Recommended for Canada Reads (CBC Radio) 2003.