The Seaboard Review of Books: June 30, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 25
In this issue:
There’s Canadian art, two east coast mystery/thrillers, a book on medically assisted suicide in Canada, and two poetry reviews this week.
A summer break:
There will not be a Monday issue next week, but we’ll return on the 14th of July. We hope your summer is off to a good start wherever you are (or winter, if you’re reading this from the Southern Hemisphere)!
Review of the Week
Other Reviews
Fiction
Non-Fiction
Poetry
Michael Greenstein Reviews:
Hot Takes: Brief Notes on Books Present & Past
(Note: clicking on the underlined link takes you to the book’s publisher page or Amazon.ca for more information or for purchasing purposes)
A Gentleman and a Thief by Dean Jobb
The handsome thief inches along a ledge. From a window, a dowager screams, “Oh!” But, on closer look, “Oooo…”
For those of us who’ve been robbery victims, a sighting of Cary Grant, as above in To Catch A Thief, is sadly uncharacteristic. Or, for that matter, of Jon Hamm heisting valuables in the new series Your Friends and Neighbors. For me, robbery was the muddy footprints a burglar tracked when removing our stereo.
Blame E.W. Hornung for glam fictional thieves. To Arthur Conan Doyle’s indignation, Hornung riffed off Sherlock Holmes to create Raffles, a brilliant, charismatic thief-protagonist. Problem: Raff could be a little too glam. Raffles-bedazzled, the kid brother of a friend of mine, broke into neighbours’ houses and made off with any sweets and spare change he could find. Not from need: kid bro lived in a tony Toronto ’hood and attended a veddy upper-crust private school.
Inevitably, kid bro got caught. If only Dean Jobb’s 2024 biography A Gentleman and A Thief had been around for him to read. Jobb’s subject, the real-life dashing thief Arthur Barry, robbed his merry way through 1920s New York society. With Raff-like cool, he once even lifted jewellery minutes after chatting up Edward, Prince of Wales. Unlike Raff, Barry couldn’t forever outwit the police, and ended up serving years in prison. Too bad for him, but a good cautionary tale for would-be Grants/Hamms/Raffs. (Reviewed here.) Contributed by Melanie Jackson.
Book News
If you would like to have your book event (or any other bookish news) shared in our Monday emails, please contact James at editor[at]theseaboardreview.ca!
Lisa Timpf:
Lisa Timpf's story “Going with the Flow,” about her Border Collie mix “Sneeks”, was included in Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from My Dog. Amy Newmark discussed this story, along with one other story from What I Learned from the Dog, on a recent Chicken Soup for the Soul podcast. You can find the link here:
https://www.chickensoup.com/podcast/
To listen to this episode, click on “podcast” in the upper menu, then click “Listen to the Chicken Soup for the Soul podcast.” Select “What a Clever Dog” from the episode list.
Emily Weedon’s Drunk Fiction
Yes, The Seaboard Review of Books is sponsoring “Drunk Fiction”! One of the books for sale at the event will be free for a lucky attendee. Mark your calendars for July 22nd! The Caledonian is at 856 College Street in Toronto.
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Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief
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