ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

AT THE END OF any long journey, the traveler cannot help but look back and remember with great affection all those who, somewhere along the way, have helped to lighten the load. Quite often—and quite surprisingly—these kindred souls do not realize either the timeliness or the importance of their assistance. Although they have sometimes even forgotten their contributions, the grateful author has not: They have become as much a part of the finished book as its pages and binding.

All thanks, then, to Eileen Roberts, of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, for her friendship, and for the many stimulating conversations about the rivers in our midst, and the role they play in detective fiction. Eileen’s delight about everything from residential trapezes to toxicity has so often been the necessary tinder to my flame.

And to Doug Bell, whose generosity and patient companionship is embedded invisibly throughout this book.

To friends Doreen and Geoff Dixon, for putting into my hands so many rare and fascinating books—and always at precisely the moment when they were most needed. It’s beyond synchronicity: It’s downright spooky! Doreen and Geoff have also very kindly, and so frequently, taken me places I needed to go. Driving with them in the rain to discover junk shops and overgrown churchyards is simply delicious: like wine to the wicked.

Special thanks to Marie-Andrée Lamontagne of the Montréal International Blue Metropolis Festival, and grateful acknowledgments to the Canada Council for the Arts, the Embassy of Canada in Rome, and the Délégation du Québec à Rome for making it possible for me to meet so many Flavia fans in Italy.

To Beatrice Orlandini for being herself: a beautiful and most charming shepherd.

And to Marella Paramatti, of the Festivaletteratura di Mantova, and interviewer Chiara Codecà; and to Laura Grandi and Luisa Rovetti, of Grandi & Associati, in Milan: a thousand thank-yous would never be enough.

To the memory of my cousin, the late Bill Bryson, and his wife, Barb, for providing important photographs and documents, and for bringing me home again through time to my childhood.

To Denise Bukowski and Stacy Small, of the Bukowski Agency, Toronto, for handling all the really important matters with such efficient grace and good humor.

Once again, to Roger K. Bunting, Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemistry, Illinois State University, whose wise counsel has saved me from excessive chemical mischief.

My chemically inclined readers will have spotted at once that I have taken certain liberties with the Levine-Bodansky method, by which the presence of paraldehyde is detected in biological fluids. I can plead only that great simplification is sometimes necessary, even with the most fascinating procedures.

And finally, as always, to my wife, Shirley, who has allowed Flavia to occupy our days, our nights, and our home for nearly ten years. If anyone deserves a medal, it is Shirley, and so I hereby award her the first and only Companion of Valor, First Class, for love and patience and tolerance far, far beyond the vows of marriage.

Isle of Man

Maundy Thursday, 2017