Photo Printed with permission, Courtesy of the Toronto Star Photograph Archives,
Photographer Harold Whyte.
Canadian Dianne Scott lives a short ferry ride from Toronto Island, which is the setting of her award-winning Christine Lane Mystery series. When Dianne is not writing, she is walking Toronto’s neighborhoods, coffee klatching with friends, and cuddling her Bichon Poodle. Learn more about Christine and her books at https://diannescottauthor.com/
Setting a Mystery in the Psychedelic 60s
The setting of a novel is an important choice by an author. Geographical location and time period can inspire plot, characterization and themes. And the setting of Yorkville, Canada does not disappoint as a locale of a mystery book.
In the 1950s, the Yorkville area of Toronto was populated by coffee shops and local artists. Young people gravitated to the neighborhood because of its cheap rent and creative sensibilities. Local art hung on café walls and folk and jazz singers would play for their food. Musicians like Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell sang in the music venues that dotted the area.
Within a decade, Yorkville had become a mecca for hippies and was crowned the “Haight-Ashbury” of Canada. Thousands of youths converged on its streets to drink coffee, listen to music, smoke drugs, hook up, protest war, and be seen.
Clearly, 1960s Yorkville was a fascinating place. But why did I set the third book in my Christine Lane Mystery series there?
I blame it on my dad. My father was a Toronto Police officer and had patrolled Yorkville in its hippie heyday. He told me about an undercover operation he had led to catch a persistent purse thief. (Not only did Yorkville have the grooviest music around, but it also had a street of high-end boutiques for Toronto’s carriage crowd to dine and shop.)
My father requested a policewoman for the sting. (Note, they were called policewomen in the 1960s, not police constables.) She came dressed to the nines and was asked to walk up and down Cumberland Ave as bait to the purse snatcher. My dad would move in for the arrest when the thief appeared. Unfortunately, the policewoman attracted the attention of storekeepers and interested suitors, so the purse snatcher didn’t approach.
On day two of the sting, another policewoman arrived, tall and athletic, and dressed in simple, plain clothes. After an hour walking Cumberland Ave, a man dashed by and grabbed her purse. The policewoman held tightly onto the purse strap, pulled a brick from her purse and knocked the thief senseless.
When I heard that story, I thought, Aha! That’s my main character! Christine Lane would bring a brick to a purse snatcher operation and take control of the situation. My father’s story sparked the idea of setting a Christine Lane Mystery in Yorkville.
Yorkville is a rich setting for a mystery. By the end of the 1960s, thugs and motorcycle gangs had overrun the streets. Young people were overdosing on drugs that were toxic. Violence, sexual assault, and hard drug use were on the rise. Politicians were fed up with the simmering, crime-stricken area. It was a perfect place for my protagonist Christine Lane and her officer friends to go on an undercover mission to find a missing teen and the source of the deadly drugs.
Another benefit of this groovy Yorkville setting was that it forced my straight-laced protagonist to loosen up. As an undercover youth volunteer, Christine Lane had to be relatable, sociable and sometimes flirty as she chatted with the local youth.
The last advantage of the Yorkville setting is that I could easily incorporate themes such as social justice, friendship and community that are important to my series.
So when a book’s setting is rife with crime, allows opportunity for character development, and easily integrates important themes, then it becomes a mystery writer’s go-to locale. Unfortunately, as Joni Mitchell sang, they paved over Yorkville’s paradise of cafes and music venues and put up parking lots, boutiques and high-end art galleries. The groovy Yorkville setting of the 1960s is no more, except in the pages of books.
A Christine Lane Mystery, Book 3
A drug-ridden Village. A missing daughter. An undercover cop way over her head.
Policewoman Christine Lane was accustomed to the easygoing pace of Toronto Island patrol. The lake view was gorgeous, the locals friendly and the crime nominal. Then Lane and her officer friends are handed a risky undercover assignment: stamp out the illegal drug trade poisoning the hippie neighborhood of Yorkville Village in downtown Toronto.
Not only is Christine inexperienced in dealing with gangs, bikers and drug dealers, but she’s assigned a secret mission to find a missing Village teen. Immersed in subterfuge, Christine desperately searches for the girl while trying to ascertain the heroin pipeline. Can she rescue the teen and expose the drug kingpin before her cover is blown?
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