How to Face Death

As set out in my review of The Sixth Lamentation by William Brodrick, Agnes Embleton, born Aubert, considers how to die as motor neurone disease inexorably consumes her.

Her son, Freddie, does not want Agnes to suffer. He wants professional care for her.

Agnes is determined to die on her own terms. She will stay at home. She will draw on the assistance of government provided home care. She has asked a homeless woman, Wilma, that she befriended to live with her to help her through the nights. Family can help but she is not relying on them.

Lucy does not want her Gran to die. Agnes replies:

“I have to, Lucy. Death is like the past. We can’t change either of them. We have to make friends with them both.”

Agnes reminds me of Jenny, the disabled dancer with terminal bowel cancer in The Discourtesy of Death, a later Father Anselm mystery. 

Jenny explains her embrace of her life:

‘Now? she replied. ‘I want my life. I was ready to die before but now I want my life. I know that in one way it’s broken, disappointing, limited, worthless, empty and insignificant … but it’s mine. It’s all I’ve got. I’m still me. And I know it will soon become messy and painful and frightening, but I still want it. I want to live what I’ve got … do you understand? It’s as valuable to me now as it ever was. I’m still … full of something … and it can be exhilarating, despairing, violent and peaceful - every state you can think of - and I just want to keep hold of it … for as long as possible.’

Jenny and Agnes are both determined that it is their life to live as they die. Neither will accelerate the end.

In posts on Louise Penny’s book, The Madness of Crowds, and my niece, Alanna, I wrote of my conviction that all lives have meaning. Because a person is dying does not diminish their dignity and the importance of their life.

Late in the book Agnes can no longer leave her bed. She cannot move her legs or arms. She can move her eyes. She studies her room until there is nothing left to learn. She can still use her mind. She lets her imagination take her into the air and she becomes a bird looking down upon the world. She goes back to WW II swooping into a collaborator’s office and diving through his iris into his brain.

As the end nears, Agnes communicates by pointing to the letters on an alphabet card. Every word is meaningful. The emotions are extraordinary.

Lucy tells Agnes of the trial evidence. Will she live long enough to hear the truths revealed in and out of court?

Brodrick’s powers of description are excellent:

She was fed by drip now, procured by Freddie when he insisted his mother would not die in a hospital bed, but in her home. Everyone diligently fussed over her needs, not realisng that Agnes didn’t care, knowing nothing of the carnival that raged out of sight.

As she lays in her bed going through her memories Agnes loves listening to her favourite piece of music, the powerful and poignant Romance sans paroles Op.17, No. 3 by Gabriel Fauré, which she played for decades on the piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plKLrnRcVwc&list=RDplKLrnRcVwc&start_radio=1

****

Brodrick, William - (2023) - The Discourtesy of Death and Can Death be Courteous? and Gilbertines in Fiction and Contemporary Life; (2025) The 6th Lamentation and Reflecting on the 6th Lamentation in the 6th Lamentation

Reflecting on the 6th Lamenation in the 6th Lamentation

In my last post I reviewed The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick. The title of the book is striking.

In the story a former SS officer, Eduard Schwermann known in England as Nightingale, seeks sanctuary at the Gilbertine priory of Lakewood in England in 1995. He is alleged to have been a leader in the deportation of Jews from Paris in 1942. 

Brodrick could not have known when The 6th Lamentation was published in 2003 how the concept of sanctuary would become such a fraught issue 22 years later, especially in the America of Donald Trump.

As set out in my review Schwermann was granted sanctuary. While there has been no legal right of sanctuary in England since 1675, the authorities of 2003 did not enter the monastery to arrest Schwermann.

Who should have the right to claim sanctuary? 

While Schwermann is at Lakewood a French man, Salomon Lachaise, comes to the Lakewood Priory and confronts Schewermann:

With one great savage movement, Salomon Lachaise, tore open his shirt from top to bottom, both hands ripping the fabric apart, exclaiming in a loud voice, “I am the son of the Sixth Lamentation.”

Lachaise is a medievalist, a professor of history at the University of Zurich. 

In 1942 Lachaise and his mother were taken from Paris to Switzerland by a smuggling ring of young people in their 20’s called The Round Table evoking Arthurian images. They were saved from the Holocaust. The other members of their family are taken to the death camps and killed.

In the Bible, Jeremiah has five lamentations “each mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, each placing absolute trust in its sworn Protector”.

The Fifth Lamentation ends:

20. Why have you utterly forgotten us, 

Forsaken us for so long?

21. Bring us back to you, LORD, that we may return:

Renew our days as of old.

22. For now you have indeed rejected us

and utterly turned your wrath against us.

The agony of those powerful words must have felt personal for many Jewish people caught up in the Holocaust. Calling the Holocaust the Sixth Lamentation is visceral and vivid.

Lachaise thinks of the lamentations of the Jewish people at the hands of the church over the centuries. He sees the irony in the mythical Knights of the Round Table being re-surrected to save Jewish children as a small effort of atonement for the persecution of Jews by the Church over the centuries but now “the person who broke it apart” is protected by the Church. The betrayal of the Round Table caused lifetime guilt in the betrayer.

Lachaise reflects to Anselm on how God in the Bible, “made covenant with Abram and he became Abraham …. The change of name obliterates the past, bestowing a blessed future.” Brodrick took my breath away when Lachaise, speaking of Schwermann added:

“So, who was it that dared to take the place of God and give that man across the lake a new name, a new life?” 

****

The Discourtesy of Death and Can Death be Courteous? and Gilbertines in Fiction and Contemporary Life; (2025) The 6th Lamentation

The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick

(30. - 1273.) The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick - How does God call us? For Anselm it was a sense of unease in his barrister’s robes, a “restlessness” in which he began “to feel out of place”. The feelings were “vaguely religious”. They crystallized when he sat down one day in Westminister Cathedral and prayed. He was being called to the religious life of a monk. Anselm joins the Gilbertine Order at Larkwood Priory.

In the spring of 1995 Agnes Embleton, born Aubret, is diagnosed with a terminal neurological condition. She has been a cipher to her children and granddaughter. She refuses to talk about what happened to her in France during the Nazi occupation and her subsequent experiences in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. She has abrupt impenetrable withdrawals from “ordinary life”. Only her husband, Arthur Embleton, can ease her back. Now Arthur is gone from a stroke and Agnes is facing her end.

At the same time Agnes contemplates dying there is a crisis at Larkwood Priory. A man, Eduard Walter Schwermann now known as Nightingale, has claimed sanctuary. He was a “low ranking SS officer based in Paris during the war. He’s incriminated in the deportation of thousands of Jews to the death camps”. He had come to England in 1945 with a French collaborator, Victor Brionne, known after the war as Berkeley. 

The monks gather in Chapter, community meeting, to decide if Schwermann will be allowed to stay. There are conflicting positions within and without the community. The British government and the Vatican want him to stay while the allegations are investigated. 

The Prior, Father Andrew, makes the decision. Schwermann can stay.

In his dozen years at the Priory Anselm has become a priest. He has found all the emotions of life are present in monastic life. It is a life of “evolving contentment”.

Agnes writes  her memories and gives the journal to her granddaughter, Lucy, to read.

The journal of Agnes is set out in the book. Agnes was involved in a student group, the Round Table, smuggling Jewish children to safety. She was arrested and sent to the concentration camps. Her story is devastating and wrenching. It is no surprise the trauma has affected her deeply.

Anselm is called to Rome to meet Beniamino Cardinal Vincenzi, the Vatican’s Secretary of State. Anselem is tasked with finding Victor Brione and finding out what happened near the end of the war when Schwermann and Brione came to a Gilbertine priory in France.

The time of Occupation still creates turmoil 50 years later in France.

What will be done by the political establishment in London and the religious establishment in Rome to avoid further embarrassment concerning Schwermann and where does Larkwood fit in this most awkward situation? Anselm is in deep waters of intrigue. 

Anselm is a rarity in fictional sleuths. He is a patient man. He does not feel a need to aggressively pursue information. He is willing to let others pursue threads he has identified.

Anselm is a subtle man, trained as a barrister to appear in court and as a priest to hear confessions. He is exceptional at listening. He lets men and women talk to him. He does not demand their stories.

The disparate parties start coming together. Brodrick is brilliant in connecting the streams of knowledge.

After a year at the Priory, Schwermann goes on trial for murder for his role in deporting Jews from Paris to Auschwitz. The Crown prosecutor, Oliver Penshaw,  recites the roundup of 12,884 Jews, including 4,051 children, in July of 1942 and their transportation to Auschwitz. Few survived.

Penshaw says that, though his rank was SS-Untescharführer, Schwermann was a leader in organizing the roundup of Jews and overseeing their shipment to Auschwitz.

The trial has the quiet intensity I have experienced in Canadian courts. Cross-examination is precise and devastating. There are none of the histronics of some American fictional trials.

Defence counsel, Mr. Bartlett, delves into the distinctions in France between refugee Jews and French born Jews, the latter often assimilated.

He examines the knowledge of French officials in 1942 on what was to happen to the refugee Jews when they were transported East to be “re-settled”.

The Holocaust is not doubted but there are challenging questions on when it was known. What can be proven as known by Schwermann in 1942?

Contemplating the trial, one of the monks, thinking of the real life Paul Touvier, reflected that it was only the collaborators who could bargain with the Nazis to save some lives.

I thought of Kastner's train. In 1944 Rudolph Kastner, a Jewish man, negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to allow 1,670 Hungarian Jews to travel from Hungary to Switzerland. Kastner, a lawyer and journalist, knew that the Hungarian Jews in the hundreds of thousands being deported to Auschwitz would be killed. His actions remain controversial today. Did he sell his soul to the devil?

Outside the trial, what happened in France during WW II is gradually revealed. Who betrayed the Round Table? Was it treachery in the Priory or in Paris? 

Among the many issues Anselm is pondering is what the Vatican knew in 1944.

The answers to Anselm’s questions and the resolution of the trial are confounding and thought provoking. The 6th Lamentation is an amazing book. To say all I want about the book will take another two posts.

****

Brodrick, William - (2023) - The Discourtesy of Death and Can Death be Courteous? and Gilbertines in Fiction and Contemporary Life (2025) Reflecting on the 6th Lamentation in the 6th Lamentation

Thinking About Legal Assistants

While reading An Insignificant Case by Phillip Margolin I was struck by the character Elin Crane. In the book “average” lawyer Charlie Webb is defending the eccentric Lawrence Weiss who calls himself Guido Sabatani. Weiss is certain that he is the re-incarnation of a Renaissance painter.

Webb is feeling overwhelmed when Sabatani refuses to have anyone except Webb defend him on charges of murdering the restauranteur, Gretchen Hall, from whom he took back a painting he sold her because she did not display it publicly, and Yuri Makarov, the bodyguard of movie producer, Leon Golden.

Webb’s modest legal practice has not needed an assistant. He rents space in a suite of offices where there is a slot outside each office door for a lawyer’s card reflecting the constant turnover of lawyers in the building.

Now he is dealing with a case with a huge amount of information.

Webb is grateful when an attractive young woman, Crane, volunteers to help him.

It turns out Crane has personal reasons and motivations for becoming Webb’s assistant. She is far from the woman he thought she was when she joined him.

Webb does not do a background check upon her. He is happy to have an unpaid assistant.

Crane’s deceit prompted me to think about hiring assistants in the real world. At our law office in Melfort when hiring we rely on resumes, interviews and calls to past employers. We explain the need for confidentiality to prospective assistants.

Legal assistants, especially in small offices, must have access to confidential information to do their jobs. They are trusted to be responsible and not disclose office information.

Our experience has been that our assistants have been reliable and discreet.

In Escape Velocity by Susan Wolfe, a legal mystery set in Silicon Valley, the lead character is Georgia Griffin, a paralegal in the firm. When I asked Wolfe in an email exchange why Griffin was a paralegal rather than a lawyer she advised:

That was strictly dictated by my plot. I needed to have a main character whom other people would underestimate, even forget about, because that allowed her to be a fly on the wall for many very senior meetings she would otherwise not have access to. The executives treated her as invisible. I don’t believe they would have treated even the most junior lawyer in such a dismissive manner.

We work hard in our office not to treat staff as “invisble” but recognize they are usually in the background.

I would say virtually every law office is vulnerable should an assistant be unscrupulous.

The vulnerability of law offices was further illustrated in Proof by Jon Cowan. Grace Jamieson, a paralegal at the Los Angeles law firm of Thompson West, leaves the firm to join fired senior partner, Jake West, in his quest to solve murders that are connected to Thompson West. Her inside knowledge of the firm is used in ways that are definitely unethical and, probably legally wrong.

In An Insignificant Case, Webb is blind sided when Crane reveals she has been using her position for her own purposes.

Using office information for personal reasons would destroy an assistant’s career but to the dishonest that would be of no concern.

I will continue to be confident that our office can rely on the integrity of our assistants while recognizing as a blogger and a reader there are abundant fictional opportunities for authors to create unreliable assistants. 

****

Margolin, Phillip - (2025) - An Insignificant Case 

Proof by Jon Cowan

(29. - 1272.) Proof by Jon Cowan - Jake West, Rich Kaplan and Javi Alvarez all attended Boalt Hall, now Berkeley Law. Jake is the son of a very prominent L.A. lawyer, Norman West. 

Their careers and lives have taken divergent paths. Jake, a skilled trial lawyer, has become an out of control alcoholic who has barely gone to his office in his father’s firm in a year. Rich, grinding away, has become a partner in the same firm, Thompson and West. Javi, trying to get the right results for clients using the wrong methods has been disbarred and is working as a private investigator.

Norman West, Jake’s father, is a domineering man in the family and at the office. Jake has chafed all his life at his father’s control. 

Rich is trying to get a drunken Jake home one night when there is a knock on the car window. When Jake opens the window a hooded gunman shoots Rich in the head with .44 Magnum and drops the gun. By picking up the gun, a deeply shaken Jake becomes the lead suspect.

Jake’s family life is a mess because of his alcohol abuse. On the night of Rich’s death his blood alcohol reading was .16. The average person is stumbling drunk at that level. When Rich found him that evening Jake was making a credible legal argument to a woman, not his wife, and a non-existent jury in an empty courtroom. Decades of heavy drinking are needed to reach such a tolerance.

Sioban McFadden, a bright and charming former Dublin detective, is the lead homicide detective.

Jake, prone to conspiracies, believes Rich’s death was connected to his last case - the defence of Tianna Walker who is accused of murdering two of her children by setting fire to their apartment while she was drunk. 

I had more difficulty with Rich defending a criminal case than a conspiracy to murder him. He was a corporate lawyer dealing with complex contracts. To take on murder defence does not make sense.

The facts grow ever more complicated with more murders connections to the deaths of Rich and Tianna’s children.

With the value of real estate sky high in L.A. it is no surprise that a billion dollar development is involved in the plot.

There is an underlying legal complexity to the book. If a firm ends up in a situation where a client’s case intersects with another client there is a conflict of interest. If there is a direct connection the firm must not represent either client. While there may be some circumstances where the firm could continue with both clients the prudent course is to withdraw from both clients. Of course, that is not exciting and Jake is flexible with legal ethics.

His disregard for the ethics that have been established over centuries irritated me. The ends do not justify the means. Javi has been disbarred for such an approach to the law. 

Jake will do anything for a client he believes in. That attitude inevitably means he compromises his integrity.

He is already in a precarious position because of a case in which he was ethically trapped by a false document created to confirm Jake was accessing documents to which he had been prohibited access.

I was reminded of Mickey Haller in the Michael Connelly series engaging in an unethical action to gain a mistrial for a client in a case about to be lost. I called the “Bloody Flag Move” sleazy. Jake, while handsome and charismatic and brilliant, is also sleazy.

There are other lawyers in the book who also act unethically. I do not excuse any of them.

If you like lawyers who consider ethical rules suggestions you will enjoy Jake.

When Jake and his team use legal skills by launching a civil action they resort to the approaches that dominate crime shows on T.V. They convince, entice, threaten and ignore the law.

The bad guys, including the lawyers opposing Jake, look to violence. It is constantly an option to solve a problem. Violence, threatened or actual, is dramatic but not convincing in big law firms and small law firms. 

There was some nifty legal maneuvering by Thompson West against Jake - he is pushed from the firm - that was very credible while lowering the drama quotient.

Jake’s personal life plays a role. He is good at wanting to be a good husband and a good father. His teenage daughter, Chloe, is becoming hardened to his parental lapses and careful when he tries to make amends.

Cowan reminds me of Michael Connelly. He tells a story well. Though I have been unhappy with how several of Connelly’s recent books see detectives breaching the rules of lawful investigations Cowan goes further. Jake, his colleagues and Detective McFadden do not respect the law. They are cynical about the legal system. Their attitude is summed up by McFadden’s thought:

There’s doing what’s legal, and there’s doing what’s right.

It is the justification of vigilantes around the world.

I rarely read the blurb on the inside of the front cover but I did on Proof. It said Jake forms a team to “skirt the law in order to find the proof he needs”. “Skirt” is a euphemism. They break the law.

Cowan was a writer and executive producer of the legal T.V. series, Suits. As I read the book I found myself envisaging Jake as Harvey Specter (the actor, Gabriel Macht) in Suits.

Cowan writes a smooth driving narrative drawing the reader through the book. He has the skill to write a legal thriller focused on law rather than a conventional American thriller where the hero happens to be a lawyer.

The Diamond Queen of Singapore by Ian Hamilton

(31. - 1274.) The Diamond Queen of Singapore by Ian Hamilton - To my surprise Ava Lee is back in Toronto to start the book and returns to debt collection. I had thought she would be full time in China after the last few books.

Ava returns to Toronto with her lover, Pang Fai, to introduce her to the city, her mother, her mother’s friends and her friends. It is a relaxing visit until her best friend in high school, Mimi, tells her of her father-in-law, Phil Gregory, losing all his money in a fraud scheme and committing suicide.

It has been a very skilful fraud involving Graham Muir. Gregory had met him when he started attending Harvest Table Bible Church, a mega-evangelical church. Muir established an investment fund, Harvest Investment Fund, that only accepted investments from church members. Over $30 million was invested. Suddenly all the money is gone. Muir created funds in 4 provinces which renders any investigation very difficult. They are bankrupt and he is bankrupt while living comfortably on his wife’s inherited millions.

It takes no persuasion for Ava to decide she will pursue the money. While she no longer needs to earn money through debt collection she has the lawyer for the defrauded sign the usual agreement she had used with Uncle. She is to keep 30% of any amount collected.

She swiftly learns the money went to Amsterdam. The lawyer in Canada had been unable to get further than the first stop for the money.

She hires Jacob Smit again. The clever little investigator takes her to meet members of the Jain community in Antwerp who have become leading diamond brokers. Integrity and honesty and trust govern their relationships. They will share information if they were used in a fraudulent scheme.

Until reading the book I had not known of the extensive diamond business in Antwerp.

Eventually the search takes her to Singapore. She finds her contacts in the triads of mainland China and Hong Kong are of limited help. The Singapore government has crushed the triads in Singapore. The ability to detain those arrested withouot charge indefinitely was used against the triads. One leader was held 12 years without charge until he died in prison. It is explained to Ava that while the Western World believes in law and order Singapore believes in order.

The Diamond Queen of Singapore sees Ava’s vast network of connections that extend around the world. She carefully and continually cultivates guanxi (the Chinese word for relationships based on favours and trust). She strives to maintain relationships.

In The Diamond Queen of Singapore her triad connections continue, even expand.

There is a touch of violence but the use of menace was far more intimidating.

The money of bad guys and bad girls cannot disappear when Ava goes after you.

At the same time Ava’s relationship with Pang Fai is deepening and Ava is being drawn into the movie industry with a powerful story deserving to be made into a movie.

The Diamond Queen of Singapore was a welcome return to the early books in the series when Ava was using her accounting skills. The later Ava Lee books are easy reads building on what has happened in the earlier books of the series.

****

Hamilton, Ian - (2012) - The Water Rat of Wanchai; (2013) - The Disciple of Las Vegas; (2014) - The Wild Beasts of Wuhan; (2014) - The Red Pole of Macau; (2016) - The Scottish Banker of Surabaya; (2018) - The Two Sisters of Borneo; (2019) - The King of Shanghai; (2020) - The Princeling of Nanjing; (2020) - Fate; (2020) - Foresight; (2021) - Fortune; (2022) - Finale; (2022) - Body Counts in Fictional Gang Wars (Ian Hamilton, John Grisham and Don Winslow); (2023) - The Couturier of Milan; (2023) - The Iman of Tawi-Tawi; (2024) - The Goddess of Yantai; (2025) The Mountain Master of Sha Tin