Charlotte Gray has written a rollicking account of a murder story in 1915 Toronto that involved “Bert” Massey, a louche and minor member of the wealthy Massey clan, who was fatally shot by his family’s 18-year- old immigrant servant, Carrie Davies. The terrified maid feared she was about to be traduced and violated. The tale of the crime and the subsequent trial is told against an expansive backdrop of the increasingly gruesome world war in Europe in which class and rights of entitlement are all thrown into the vortex.
The Massey Murder: A Maid, Her Master and the Trial That Shocked a Country is alternatively fascinating, gripping and frustrating, but before we get into all that, it is at this point that I must make the sort of conflict confession that has now become derigeur in the better sort of review or research essay. In this case, perhaps you might be wise to fasten your seat belts:
The author and the reviewer have known each other...John Fraser is the executive chair of the National NewsMedia Council of Canada.
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