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In 1943 Sir Harry Oakes was murdered. The mystery circling the gold mining titan’s death became known as the crime of the century.

As part of this story takes place in Ontario, Canada, I felt the pull to read it. The story was well-researched & well-laid out. Gray very obviously put a great deal of effort into finding the relevant information & dictating it to the reader. That being said, I did not love this book because the subject matter was dry.

Reading about locations that were familiar to me should have left me feeling some form of nostalgia yet, I was eager to move past those parts in the hope of coming across a section that would be more thrilling. That was my own mistake. This is not to say that Canadian history is not interesting, to me or generally, but the facts of Harry’s timeline in Northern Ontario lingering in the back & forth of his struggles became redundant & was overall slow-moving. I acknowledge that this most certainly reflects the reality of the matter. The man was digging holes with a hand-held shovel so, I’m not sure what else I expected.

As much as I wanted to appreciate Harry Oakes, I never quite came to the point where I felt any empathy for him. Maybe if I understood how much the gold rush(es) played a toll on people and their livelihoods, I might have learnt to appreciate why he put all his eggs in that single basket. Not to knock him and his labour but, I just couldn’t connect with him and therefore felt disconnected from his life story.

Gray does a very good job detailing Harry’s life and offering the reader as much information as available to her. My opinions are in no way a reflection of her writing or general abilities.