The Weird World of Wes Beattie

The youngest sprig of a stuffy Toronto family, Wes Beattie is one of life’s losers, with a tendency to fabricate. Since Wes has the lying skills of a six-year-old, his fibs have tended to inspire a certain fond exasperation, but now he’s gone too far. After narrowly escaping jail for swiping a woman’s handbag from a sleazy motel, the hapless Wes is on trial for murder: his uncle has been bludgeoned to death, and the weapon is covered in Wes’s sticky fingerprints. Wes’s fantastic explanations—about a frame-up, a villainous gang, a mysterious sexpot—only enrage his already mortified family. But Sidney “Gargoyle” Grant, a disreputable young lawyer, is irritated by the rush to condemnation, and resolves to untangle the truth. If Agatha Christie had lived in Canada in the early 1960s (and been a wittier writer), Wes Beattie could have been her book.