Leave Me By Dying (Ellis Portal Mystery, #4) by Rosemary Aubert

Leave Me By Dying (Ellis Portal Mystery, #4) Reviews

• 
  Bill

  I've enjoyed reading
  Rosemary Aubert's Ellis Portal mysteries.
  Leave Me By Dying is the 4th book in the series. It's a prequel to the initial books. We find Portal at Law School, trying to find a project so he can impress a judge and get summer employment as an intern.
  
  The year is 1965 and many things are going on in the country down south; Martin Luther King Jr is organizing a freedom march Selma and things are not going well in the Viet Nam war. These events are distant from what is happening in Toronto, but Portal's brother, Michele, is involved protesting the war and the draft, He wants Ellis to help a Native Canadian boy, who was born in Buffalo, avoid the draft. This presents itself as possible project #1 for Portal, an opportunity to research international law and US law and native laws.
  
  As well, Ellis's 'friend' or rather law school associate Gleason Adams wants Ellis to help him sort out the circumstances of a dead body they see at the city morgue; a body that disappears during their visit.
  
  All in all it's an interesting story. We get to spend time with Ellis's family and they are all interesting. The mystery itself is different and there is a nice twist at the end. The other story involving the draft issue also is an interesting concept. I also liked visiting Toronto in this story. It takes place 9 years before I went to university there. We also get an opportunity to see the events that affected Portal's later life. All in all an entertaining mystery and story. (3 story)
• 
  Susan

  The only reason I have not given this novel 4 stars is the length of the author’s somewhat grand backgrounding for characters who have major and minor roles in the other books in this series. I have thoroughly enjoyed the three books which take place decades after this “prequel” but this one bogged down. Ellis is so young, so naive and such a striver callow student that 99% of readers will have figured out the denouement pages and pages before him. It becomes a guessing game to see how long before he “gets it..” However its flaws I do think it succeeds on two levels: as a portrait of a young man who is trying desperately to invent himself without abandoning his roots and perhaps as a homage to the spirit of the early 1960s and the highest aims for social justice. You just have to be patient I guess!!
• 
  Gail Brown

  Better than 2 stars, but just barely a 3. A half-baked crime novel set in Toronto in the 1960’s, about a first year law student trying to solve a possible murder mystery and excel in his studies at the same time. Oddly refers to the “Fellowship of Barristers and Solicitors of Upper Canada.” My Ontario law library friends might be interested, but I have no desire to read the other five books in the series.
• 
  Shonna Froebel

  
  https://cdnbookworm.blogspot.com/2022...
• 
  Karen Koppy

  I had this figured out when the author described the dead woman. It really wasn't well written for my taste. Pretty contrived.
• 
  LJ

  LEAVE ME BY DYING – G
  Rosemary Aubert – 4th book – prequel to series
  Against the backdrop of civil rights and the Vietnam draft, we are taken back to the 1960’s when Ellis Portal studied law at the University of Toronto. Asked to accompany friend and fellow student Gleason Adams on a midnight mission to the city morgue, Portal finds himself immersed in the abrupt disappearance of a female corpse.
  
  The story is slow, dare I say plodding, but I found it an interesting study in the adage that things are not always what they seem. I very much liked the other three books in this series but, unless you are a true fan, this is not a “must read.”
  
• 
  Elizabeth

  Ellis Portal in this story could not see what was right in front of his own eyes. Most readers will figure out most of the mystery in the first 50 pages. He was terribly thick headed, but the book was well written.
• 
  Colleen

  Felt it was somewhat ameteurishly written. Not an author I will seek out again.