Clio's Gallery, Column by Karen Guest Whitehurst in Web Mystery Magazine, Fall 2005

These two nominated and award-winning novels are mainstream mysteries, which introduce us to Dr. Rebecca Temple, a Jewish-Canadian general practitioner. These novels are historical mysteries twice and three times over: Dr. Temple lives and works in 1979 Toronto, Canada, but World War II, during which Nazi Germany overran Poland, constitutes the other major historical time period; 18th century Poland and Russia make an appearance in the second novel. These historical venues were not chosen by accident, for Sylvia Maultash Warsh was born in Germany to Polish Jews, from Krakow, who survived the Holocaust. Many others in the family perished. She and her parents immigrated to Canada when she was four. These works, therefore, are very personal to the author, to her own family history. This connection gives the novels and Dr. Temple herself a depth and genuineness not necessarily found elsewhere.

To Die in Spring, nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award and two Anthonys, revolves around the lives of two sisters, Goldie, primarily, but also Chana, and what the Holocaust, which they survived at least physically, did to them. Goldie Kochinsky is Rebecca Temple’s patient and is diagnosed as suffering from paranoia. After all, she keeps claiming “they” are out to get her; however, just because Goldie is paranoid, it does not mean some one is not out to get her. Goldie fled Poland for Argentina, where she suffered at the hands of the military junta; she escaped to Toronto, Canada, where her sister, Chana Feldberg, lives, and where she dies in spring 1979.

Dr. Temple is awash in guilt over the death of her husband from diabetes; she berates herself for not having seen the symptoms and diagnosed it sooner. She’s taken a leave of absence, which, in her mind, is tantamount to abandoning her patients to the care of others. It’s this professional guilt, sparked by her private grief, which motivates Rebecca Temple to seek Goldie’s killer when the Toronto police write it off as a robbery gone wrong. The story of Goldie and Chana’s distant cousin, Nesha Malkevich, who dreams of revenge on one particular vulture of the Holocaust, weaves seamlessly into Temple’s quest for the killer. Temple and Nesha use the history of Goldie and Chana’s lives to track the villains, who are numerous, nasty, and banally evil.

Find Me Again, winner of the Edgar Award, involves a murdered Polish count, a stolen novel manuscript, two concealed truths from two different time periods, corporate greed, and Communist corruption. This story begins in August 1979, in Toronto, Canada, on the anniversary of Dr. Rebecca Temple’s husband’s death, but the novel ranges back, first, to war-torn, Nazi-occupied Poland, and then to war and intrigue-torn 18th century eastern Europe. The main story, the murder of Count Michael Oginski, and the main subplot, Natalka’s mysterious illness, remain in the last quarter of the 20th century, but the clues to these mysteries lie buried in the 18th and earlier 20th centuries.

Sarah Adler, Rebecca Temple’s mother-in-law, agrees to aid a long-lost Polish acquaintance, Halina, in obtaining answers, if not healing, for her daughter, Natalka, a famous classical pianist. Temple agrees to see Natalka, and this brings Temple into the orbit of John (Janek) Baron, the estranged husband of Halina, and Count Michael Oginski. He confides in Temple his dreams for his novel and sparks a romantic interest. While there is an immediate and sinister air of suspense around Halina and Natalka, Michael’s death and his novel manuscript provoke Temple’s search for his killer.

The novel manuscript covers the period of the middle 18th century; it’s the love story, in letters, of Stanislaw Poniatowski, the last king of Poland, and Catherine the Great, the German-born empress of Russia. The manuscript mesmerizes Temple (the reader, too) and provides her the clues to follow in finding the killer. There are many villains—rapacious, egotistical, and even insane—in this main story, and ultimately, the voices from the 18th century bring Temple, in 1979, to a heart-stopping, bite-your-nails confrontation with the killer.

The subplot with Natalka connects Temple most intimately with her mother-in-law, Sarah Adler. It also demonstrates Temple’s skills as a physician, which many times mirror those of a detective and a historian. In Poland, Natalka was diagnosed with leukemia, but the Polish doctor did not fully believe his own diagnosis. This ambiguity allows Natalka to go west for treatment; her mother’s connections within the Communist Party help immensely, too. Temple puts the pieces of the puzzle together and realizes that Natalka doesn’t have leukemia, but another disease, which, in fact, shouldn’t be a consideration at all. The answer lies in the Nazi occupation of Poland and the Holocaust.

Both of these novels are good reads, well worth a reader’s time and expense. Both have a very strong sense of place, and place here isn’t just the outside or the outdoors, the externals of Toronto, St. Petersburg, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Dresden, or London, although these are well-covered. Rather, it’s the atmosphere of a doctor’s office, the way people lived in the past, the pressures and nightmares (literally) suffered by people. Both novels have precisely drawn characters, who, mostly, behave in believable fashion. Dialogue between those characters is also excellent.

There is no such thing as the perfect book, and neither of these qualifies. Each set of flaws is unique to the story being told. To Die in Spring is structurally more coherent — a single focus and a single purpose — and it flows unabated to its conclusion. Unfortunately, that ending isn’t terribly satisfying; it follows modern structure with an abbreviated resolution and no denouement. More bothersome is the sense of emotional distance between the narrator and the story. The point of view is third-person close, and it sometimes seems as if Rebecca Temple is sleepwalking through the story. Also, some of her behavior with Nesha is eyebrow-raising to say the least.

Find Me Again has no such emotional distance problems; in fact, the emotional power of this story makes one overlook the rather more serious structural and plotting errors. Both books switch points of view periodically; it’s handled more deftly in To Die in Spring, largely because there are fewer characters. Here, in Find Me Again, a switch from Temple to her mother-in-law is a good and necessary device, but the switch to Michael’s point of view seems unnecessary, particularly as it happens only once. The novel manuscript, entirely in letters, almost overbalances the rest of the novel; this should not really be a surprise since the letters are first-person point of view. The subplot with Natalka is easy to figure out, and the second subplot with John Baron’s mining company is weak to begin with and silly in its wrap up. None of this detracts, however, from the emotional power of the characters and their relationships. They override structural form.

Readers of historical mystery, take advantage of both of these novels, and eagerly await the next Dr. Rebecca Temple mystery.