"Sidelights"

Rosemary Aubert has created a unique protagonist in Ellis Portal, the central character in her novels Free Reign and The Feast of Stephen. Portal is a discredited judge, living as a homeless person following a stay in a mental hospital and a term in prison. In Free Reign, Portal is working in his garden on a deserted piece of public land in Toronto when he finds a severed human hand wearing a gold ring with the emblem of a secret society--one to which he formerly belonged. The discovery compels Portal to give up his exile and return to the heart of the city. There, he confronts his family and his past while working undercover to solve the gruesome mystery. Booklist reviewer John Rowen called Aubert's writing "crisp and brisk," with a plot that was "capably constructed, offering many surprising and satisfying human and natural twists." Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times Book Review called Free Reign a "smart, suspenseful whodunit," by a sensitive writer who gave Portal "great dignity and unusual moral depth."

In the next Portal novel, The Feast...