Mike Robertson – författare

The original Smart Aleck Chronicles was published to little, if any notice in 2007. As noted in the preface to that volume, it had neither plot or identifiable structure, its intended purpose being to present a series of entertainments on a wide range of ridiculous activities that constitute everyday life. Whether it was faithful to that lofty purpose remains a mystery, even to the author that made that bold declaration. Four years later, a second volume of the Smart Aleck Chronicles appears, its intent no less high minded than the standards of lunacy reached by its predecessor, its implementation no less laughable. This time, as in the previous volume, there are pithy and pointless observations that may have appeared in previous publications for which the author may have had responsibility, fictitious biographies of friends and colleagues, several short works of fiction and top ten lists of observations that may be symptomatic of clinical insanity. Further, just to ensure that the reader is not entirely dismayed, there are also several courageous attempts at poetry.

The original Smart Aleck Chronicles was published to little, if any notice in 2007. This was followed five years later with the release of a second volume. As noted in the prefaces to both these collections, their intended purpose was to present to readers a series of literary entertainments on a range of issues, activities, personalities and phenomena. In this, the third volume, these observations and commentaries continue, combined once again with short works of fiction. The author hopes, as he did with respect to the two previous volumes, that this edition is faithful to the lofty standards and possible amusements of those books.

Sometime in the late 1950s, on the steps of an unknown church, somebody takes a black and white photograph of an assembly of boys making their first communions. Above the heads of eight of the boys, who are all fated to die within the next twenty years, are small carefully ascribed Xs. When the picture is found more than fifty years years later in an abandoned steamer trunk purchased at a neighborhood auction, the pursuit for an answer to the mystery of those marks begins. The First Communion Murders is the story of that search.

A letter written by a seriously ill middle aged man facing the end of his life is found in a safety deposit box after he passes away. The document, immediately thought to be Jack Quinns last will and testament, sends his oldest friend on a quest to find his birth parents, his adoption only revealed to him shortly before he died. The search for the identity of the decedents birth parents takes Mark Purchell, a man who has been Quinns friend for over forty years, from his hometown of Ottawa to a small town on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. Along the way, Purchell encounters and is assisted by a number of intriguing characters, including a seedy but well-meaning neighbour, a stern librarian, a retired police officer, members of the clergy, a newspaper editor, a haughty hotel maitre d and a spirited waitress named Elaine. His investigation of The Hidden History of Jack Quinn eventually leads to a newspaper archive and a surprising answer to a departed friends last request.

Inspired by a fragment of a story written by one budding author, another aspiring author creates the life story of someone named George. From a childhood that originates in an adoption, the story proceeds through his childhood involvement in the sudden loss of his father, the destitution following that loss, a difficult adolescence and then to a curious adult life fated to conclude in a ramshackle shack originally described in the five paragraphs provided by the literary collaborator. The Biography of George is the story of a life inspired by one author and imagined by another.

In 1949, an architect and amateur magician named George Fenwick was to leap from an apartment building that he had designed and first occupied when it opened in 1936. Twenty six years later, John and Patricia Delaney rented the same apartment that George Fenwick had occupied. For reasons that neither of them were ever able to determine, the mystery of Mr. Fenwick's suicide appeared to have something to do with certain photographs found in their apartment, photographs an obsession shared by George Fenwick and his father, Richard. Their pursuit of this puzzle would led John and Patricia Delaney through all manner of investigation, from peculiar neighbours, newspaper reporters, policemen, a private detective, magicians, libraries, bookstore owners, and even each other.

He was only fifteen years old and a recent graduate of grade nine when his parents began to request, if not demand that he start earning his own money, a replacement for the allowance he had been receiving from since he was in the fifth grade. From his first employment posting as a golf caddy for $1.50 a round to a series of clerical positions in the Canadian Government, the biography of Mike Butler’s pursuit of mundane jobs is an occasionally aimless search for career, that he finally attains when he passes his thirtieth year. Expecting a future of invaluable employment opportunities, including good paying summer jobs, Mike Butler found himself wondering how he ended up taking jobs that he thought were just as low paying and miserable as the previous generation must have endured. Mike Butler’s labour history includes a tour of working on a golf course, in a grocery store, in a department store selling clothing, in a duty free shop in an airport, a brief stint in a restaurant, in factories making plastic bottle caps and chain saws, in a chemical laboratory, and in a variety of temporary clerical positions in several government departments.