In crime fiction, the gifted detective can always see through the apparent surface of normality to the truth. When 80-year-old Eugene Walker dies of evident hypothermia in an icy parking lot, only Ottawa Police Inspector Michael Green suspects that the gash on his forehead is the result of foul play rather than a fall. Even the pathologist dismisses the wound as the result of damage inflicted by the car mirror on his descent to the ice-slick pavement.But what could inspire a crime of passion against this seemingly ordinary old man?

Once Upon a Time is the second in the series featuring Barbara Fradkin’s anti-authoritarian sleuth, and it demonstrates a maturing both of the writer’s craft and her series character, whose workaholic determination on a case often threatens the stability of his marriage and family relationships. Through his investigation of Walker’s life, Green confronts the story of the Holocaust his parents could never share with him as he begins to suspect that Walker, a Polish refugee who had claimed to have no memory of the war, may have played a sinister role in the atrocities, a role he kept secret even from his own family.

The novel explores the distance secrecy creates between family members, whether their motivation is self-protection or the desire to shield loved ones from the insidious legacy of a violent past. Here, Fradkin brings the legacy of the Holocaust centre stage, casting the unfolding historical revelations as integral pieces of the crime puzzle. The interplay between past and present makes the events and the people they affected come alive on the page rather than weighing the narrative down with needless exposition.