The Case Against Owen Williams

A basic tenet of our justice system is that a person is innocent until proven guilty, and when this principle is put aside the potential for harm is great. This is the theme explored by Allan Donaldson in his latest novel, The Case Against Owen Williams.

 

The year is 1944 and the war is not going well. The inhabitants of the fictitious town of Wakefield, New Brunswick have become somewhat inured to the anxiety and dread of waiting for news of their loved ones serving overseas but they are unprepared for violence and death to occur in their own town. When the body of a teenage girl is found brutally raped and murdered, suspicion falls on Owen Williams, the last person known to have been with her before her death. In addition, there are discrepancies in Williams’ account of the evening of the murder and he belongs to the Zombies— those men who were conscripted into the army but who refused to go into active duty. Everything seems to point to Williams, everyone wants it to be Williams, yet for Lieutenant Bernard Dorkin, who has been sent by the army to observe and report on the hearing, something bothers him about the investigations. Is Williams the vicious killer he is painted to be, or has due process been usurped by position, power and public opinion and created a convenient scapegoat?

 

The Case Against Owen Williams is not the usual whodunit. Dorkin is something of a philosopher detective who seeks not only the truth about the murder, but also examines the value we place on human life and if it is possible to balance fairness and vengeance when confronted with violent death. Why, he wonders, does the fate of one man—a man he does not even much like—matter when thousands are dying every day? What is it about him, Dorkin, that makes him unable to walk away as everyone else seems to have done?

 

These questions, delivered with Donaldson’s smooth, adroit writing style, imbue the novel with a haunting, disquieting atmosphere throughout this very satisfying mystery. —Ralph Higgins