Fandom? What Fandom?

For some beach reading I picked up a pair of historical mysteries by Don Gutteridge. They are set in Ontario around the time leading up to the Upper Canada Rebellions (1837-8) which is a bit later then what I normally read (Napoleonic Wars) but I am willing to make an exception for radical reformers and secret societies and paranoia, oh my.

"Turncoat" was fun. It featured an attempted tarring and feathering of a drunken and possibly insane William Lyon Mackenzie who is one of my most favorite Canadian historical figures ever. For some reason all of my favorite Canadian historical figures are a bunch of shit-disturbing malcontents who want to overthrow the government. I choose not to question that. What I am really wondering about is why we don't tar and feather our public figures anymore. A good old fashion tar and feathering would do some politicians a world of good.

The sequel, "Solemn Vows", has a notable lack of drunken William Lyon and so I had to entertain myself by inventing slash for the main character. Then, in the final fifteen pages one half of my slash pairing went insane, tried to kill the hero and wound up drowning in a vat of beer. "His Byronic curls floating in the froth for a long second before they, too, vanished." It was every bit as odd as it sounds. In fact, it just might be the most demented ending I have ever read, not to mention incredibly weak in conjunction with the rest of the story. I suspect Don Gutteridge didn’t know how to wrap up the book so he just wrote down the most insane stuff he could come up with. Or perhaps he borrowed the JK Rowling technique...snort some crack, write a chapter, snort some crack, write another chapter, repeat.