The backstory of this debut novel by Shaun Harris is based on one of the most legendary literary heists of all time. According to lore (see here, here, or here, for example), in December of 1922 — 101 years ago! — a valise containing almost all of Ernest Hemingway’s early manuscripts was stolen from a platform at the Gare de Lyon train station (pictured below) in Paris. At the time, the young Hemingway was a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and an aspiring writer, but he had yet to publish any of his fiction. (As a further aside, this anecdote was first told by none other than Hemingway himself in Chapter 9 of his posthumous collection of stories about his life in Paris, A Moveable Feast, first published in 1964 — three years after his death by suicide.)

But did this literary theft really occur, and if so, what happened to the suitcase and its contents? Or is there more to this story that meets the eye? Did Hemingway, for example, conspire with a confederate to stage the theft in order to attract sympathy from potential publishers or to guilt-trip his first wife Hadley Richardson? (In Hemingway’s telling, the lost suitcase was with Hadley when it was stolen from the train station.) In short, who stole the valise, and why? Wherever the truth lies, what I loved the most about this unorthodox crime novel is how the author, Mr Harris, seamlessly weaves this mysterious piece of Hemingway lore into his page-turner of a story.

Alas, this is a work of pure fiction, so I can’t say more without spoiling the author’s many secrets and surprising plot twists. ¡Feliz Nochebuena!