James King

Late in her life, acclaimed novelist Elizabeth Delamere makes a request of her therapist, Doctor Newman: she asks him to oversee the publication of her last book after she dies. It is a memoir in which she reveals that she is Evelyn Dick, the notorious "torso murderer" acquitted on appeal of dismembering her husband, and convicted of killing her infant son. In 1958 she was paroled, and disappeared into the mists of history. In Blue Moon, James King draws on the historical case of Evelyn Dick, and imagines her life after her release from prison. It is a life in which she travels to Vancouver, renames herself, and settles into a position as sales clerk at Duthie Books on Robson. There she meets Ethel Wilson, begins therapy, and tries to understand the events that led to her imprisonment and current life. She also begins to write, and finds herself a successfully published author. But did she murder her husband? Is she guilty of neglect of her baby boy? Was her life as Hamilton’s most notorious prostitute her responsibility? With the help of Doctor Newman, she attempts to come to understand the violence in which she was involved, her sense of guilt, and the essential truth of her innocence.

Thomas Wainewright - Regency fop, literary hanger-on, collector of art and artifacts, forger and deported felon - is considered one of the most notorious of English murderers. He is believed to have been one of the first recorded serial killers. James King takes on this spectral character in his first novel, Faking, and examines a number of serious questions. Was Wainewright a faker? It’s historical "fact" that he forged sketches, paintings, letters and banknotes - but, more importantly, did he fake his life? In a complex tapestry of styles and voices, King plays with the assumptions of originality and experience, of academic fashions and biography. Told through the voice of a Toronto housewife, Thomas Wainewright’s story is revealed through the voices of its main characters: the overly sensitive Tom, who wishes to address the characterizations of which he perceives himself to be victim (an essay by Wilde, a character in Dickens, a novel by Bulwer-Lytton); Tom’s cunning wife, Eliza; his sister-in-law, Helen; and his son, Griffiths. Wainewright asserts his innocence of the murders (of his uncle, his mother-in-law, and his sister-in-law) but lays claim to the more fashionable - if not prestigious - guilt of forging a number of canvases, including the Gainsborough reproduced on the cover of the Simon & Pierre edition of Faking. With a deft hand, James King weaves together the language of the Regency with the language of contemporary prose (while knocking the academic conventions) to provide the reader with a novel that is sure to entertain and, at its end, cause a moment of reflection on the nature and importance of authenticity, of leading an authentic life. The Dundurn Group is pleased to announce the release of James King’s first novel, Faking. This is the first of five literary books to be published this season under the revived literary imprint, Simon & Pierre.