Thought You Were Dead - A Novel

Meet the Perfect Man... no, no, he’s not the hero of Thought You Were Dead. That would be Chellis Beith, literary researcher, slacker, reluctant detective, and a man bedevilled by every woman in his life. There’s his lost love, Elaine Champion, a now happily married inventor who uses him for market research, his best friend’s dotty ex-wife, Moe, his two vanished mothers, and his menacing boss, Athena Havlock, a celebrated writer who herself becomes embroiled in the dark side of fiction. The humour is wild, the language a thrill, the mystery within marvelously deft and daft. And as for the Perfect Man... well, nothing is as it seems. Is it? Thought You Were Dead is the most unconventional of all murder mysteries, turning the genre completely on its head, bludgeoning flat language and Puritanical sensibilities with evident glee, and is further evidence that Terry Griggs is sui generis: an original and completely inimitable literary voice.

"Griggs’ talent for creating engaging characters, both major and minor, her inventiveness with language, her mischievous humour and her refreshing sense of the absurd are sure to please and delight." — The Kitchener/Waterloo Record

"Terry Griggs’s returns continue to astound with her quirky sense of craft, a delightful mixture of reality and farce, and sharply drawn characters. She’s a hoot." — The Hamilton Spectator

"[Griggs’s] language, the verbal fireworks, the apparently limitless stream of image and metaphor—startling, heady, hilarious—do it all." — The Globe & Mail