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The night the gods smiled: Introducing Inspector Charlie Salter

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Eric Wright is the author of the Charlie Salter mysteries set in Toronto. This past year he wrote "The Last Hand" which is to be the last in the Charlie Salter series, so I decided to go back and read any novels in the series that I had missed. "The Night the Gods Smiled" is the first Charlie Salter mystery. David Summers, a professor at Douglas College in Toronto, is murdered in Montreal during an academic conference. When the Montreal police ask for help, Salter is called in on the case. He finds that Summers had attended the conference with many of his colleagues, one of whom disliked Summers very much. Salter must wade through a lot of suspects before he identifies the killer. This is a very good debut novel for this excellent police procedural series from Canada.

Charlie S. felt like a failure: "as soon as anything gets hard, you want to drop it," "you never finish anything," he heard as he grew up and things just were not in the stars for C.S. He was a failure at school, at his aborted university classes where he was bored stiff, his first marriage and now his job. He works as a police inspector for five years now after a detective he knew encouraged him to try this vocation. He needed another fifteen to retire, but now his job was in jepardy as he had made a lot of enemies as he progressed through the ranks.

His second marriage to Annie, from the prominent Montagueses of Prince Edward Island. He called her the Island princess, and she had been treated as such for most of her life. Brothers were lawyers, and Dad had been a doctor and a real estate developer. Now married to C. Salter, they always vacationed in the family guest cottage on the island. Now, his usual failure here: he felt like the lone Christian in-law in a family of Jews. CS from Anglo-Saxon ghetto in North Toronto which is now in the heart of the city due to expansion. Like son Jeff who spends every August and Christmas at his spouse's family's summer cottage.

Inspector Salter is sent to Douglas College in Toronto to investigate (ask questions of the students) the life and death of Professor David Summers. He'd been at a conference and found dead of a fractured skull in the hotel room where the conference took place (similar to Meriweather Lewis some hundred years ago on the Natchez Trace). He'd spent a good night, it seems, out with some colleagues. With Lewis, he was gambling and was killed by a sore loser.

When the killers are arraigned for Professor Summers murder and later electrocuted, God looked down and smiled, just as He will when my ordeal of near-death by strangling paid for by an ex-con is vindicated. This time he'll meet his demise. He'd already killed one woman and lived to brag about it. He's not just an accessory as he paid J.R. to do the deed this time, and he will get his just reewards in the netherworld from which he sprang. Charlie goes on to become head of Special Affairs for several more investigations before he turns in his badge. Not such a loser this time around. It's time for things to change for the better, and God will smile again for me soon.