Blog Archives

Robert Blake With His Pants Down

Long before he was notoriously tried and acquitted of murdering his wife, when he was at the top of his career, the actor Robert Blake was waiting in his trailer when I got to the set of Second-Hand Hearts, the

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A Star Is Recognized: Remembering Gordon Pinsent

Gordon Pinsent was making a movie called Klondike Fever in Barkerville, a snowbound middle-of-nowhere British Columbia town deep in the province’s mountainous interior. He was co-starring with Rod Steiger and Angie Dickinson, iconic American stars who by then were somewhat

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SCANDAL AT THE SAVOY: The Rogues Gallery Of Characters

Scandal at the Savoy will be published March 25, 2023. You can order the second installment in the Priscilla Tempest Mysteries HERE HERE

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THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE ROOM

Back in the days when I was writing about television, if I needed some cogent, insightful conversation about the CBC or broadcasting in general, I would drop into Peter Herrndorf’s Toronto office at the corner of Bay and College streets.

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A Farewell to Sanibel

I lost it on Sanibel Island the other day visiting the yellow cottage that used to be Gene’s Books. For years, I did book signings in the garden behind the cottage or else in the bookshop itself, surrounded by—drowning in!—the

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HOW I HELPED MAKE ROCK ‘N ROLL HISTORY

A one-day rock festival was held at Toronto’s Varsity Stadium Sep. 13, 1969, less than a month after the Woodstock Music Festival took place on a farm outside Bethel, New York. One festival quickly became iconic. The other was mostly

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Barbara Walters and My (Cherry) Red Shirt

It was not so much a red shirt as it was a cherry red shirt that I was wearing when Barbara Walters walked in for our interview. Looking back all these years later, I cringe at the thought of that

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Lost in the Star

Last night I dreamed I went back to the Toronto Star newsroom again. I step into the lobby at One Yonge Street and then take the elevator to the fifth floor. In my dream, Conrad Black is on the elevator.

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Ghosts of the Savoy

Seated on a banquette in a corner of the Savoy Hotel’s iconic American Bar, sipping one of Priscilla’s Buck Fizzes, the celebrated ghosts of the hotel’s legendary past swirl around. The 2022 Savoy is a sleek modern, beautifully run hotel

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Evolution of a Novel: How Death at the Savoy Came to Be

Susan Walker, former editor of Quill and Quire, who also served as the Toronto Star’s book editor, and no slouch when it comes to all things literary, has written a wonderful piece about how my new novel (with Prudence Emery),

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