Agent Zero

A compelling biography must answer two crucial questions. The first is “Who is this person?” The second is “Why is she or he important or interesting?” In that sense, this biography is an anomaly, since after reading it I knew tombstone data about the Montreal writer Doris Hedges but had little idea of her personality and motivations. And Robert Lecker’s assertion that she was “Canada’s first literary agent” is ridiculous. That might have been her claim, but since she never made any deals, she might as well have claimed to be “Canada’s greatest literary hoaxer.” Doris Hedges turns out to be neither important nor interesting.

But wait! Lecker’s subtitle offers a further hook. Its mention of “the search” implies that the reader will also learn about obsessive detective work and a biographer’s empathy with his subject, along the lines of A. J. A. Symons’s classic, The Quest for Corvo. There are a few such glimpses. One is in the acknowledgements section, where...