A Life on Trial - Softcover

Originally published as Fatal Cruise — now in trade paperback, with a new foreword by the author.

This is the true story of a bizarre murder and the controversial trial that took place in Victoria, B.C., and made headlines across Canada. It is also the story of Robert Frisbee, who, after a scarred early life, became the secretary and friend of Muriel and Philip Barnett. Then, on board the Royal Viking Star cruise ship, Muriel was murdered – and Robert Frisbee stood accused. With penetrating insight, William Deverell probes the mind of the accused and explores the legal system that tried him. His superb writing skills combine brilliantly with an insider’s knowledge of the courtroom, and the result is a seamlessly constructed, gripping narrative whose suspense never lets up.

William Deverell’s first novel, Needles, won the $50,000 Seal Award, and, since then, he has published one work of non-fiction, Fatal Cruise, and ten further novels, including Trial of Passion, winner of the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing and Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. Deverell created the popular CBC Television series Street Legal and recreated its characters in a novel by that title. He is a founding member and past-president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, a member of PEN Canada, the Screen Writers Guild, and has twice been chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. He winters in Costa Rica and spends his summers on Pender Island in B.C.
From the Hardcover edition.