Overview

Based on a true story from the nineteen-forties, CAPE TORMENT recreates the incredible events surrounding one of Canada's most shocking crimes. Quebec City jeweller, Marcel Gagnon, is desperate to be free to marry his stunning, teenage mistress, Therese Sainte-Angele. But divorce is an impossible option in his repressive Catholic community, and his frustration mounts when Therese threatens to leave him. Determined to get what he wants, he resorts to committing an unprecedented atrocity, one that wrecks lives and leaves the world a less trusting place. Rita Gagnon is the loyal wife fighting for the man she loves, swearing to honour her marriage vows to the end of her days. Marguerite Laval is the coarse, small-time felon who dresses in black, and runs errands for the jeweller she owes money to. Xavier Levesque - her crippled brother - is Gagnon's womanizing clock-maker assistant. And, Liffey MacBaine is the pretty airline stewardess, from Alberta, haunted by her past, and longing to be reunited with the daughter she gave up for adoption in the midst of appalling tragedy. All of these characters are researched representations of the real life people whose lives were forever bound by an act of cold blooded evil. Who will live and who will die? That is the question answered in this gripping novel's suspenseful, climactic scenes.

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9781479293223

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Richard Donovan was a British Airways flight purser for thirty years and, during his career, worked aboard a wide variety of civil airliners including the supersonic Concorde. His love of short story writing, and a lifelong interest in aviation history, led to him researching the ''Albert Guay Affair'' - one of Canada's most infamous criminal cases - and finally resulted in his commitment to writing a novel based on the subject. CAPE TORMENT was developed over a period of five years, during which time Donovan spent extended periods in Quebec and Alberta, studying trial transcripts and forming friendships with several people directly linked to the case. He played an insrumental role in organizing the first memorial service ever held for those whose lives were so cruelly taken more than six decades ago and, out of respect for those people and their surviving families, he chose, within his book, to change the names of everyone involved in the case. Donovan describes CAPE TORMENT as being a semi-fictionalized novel, although he has adhered extremely closely to the known facts of the criminal history, and he believes that his is the first novel ever to have covered it in such depth. The author is currently located in Andalucia, and is in the process of researching his next fact-based work.

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