Do you believe that some partnerships are simply meant to be? That for whatever reason, chance meetings throw you together, time and again, until the purpose for those meetings finally becomes clear?
Such was the case with my A FATAL AFFAIR co-author, Amanda Capper. We first met in in 2012 at Bloody Words, a now defunct Toronto-based mystery conference. I was living in Holland Landing at the time, a smallish town about 90 minutes north of Toronto. Amanda was living in Sault Ste. Marie, a small city in Northern Ontario (affectionately known as “The Soo”) a solid eight-hour drive away.
Fast forward to November 2024. I was now living in Sault Ste. Marie (a long story for another day) and, having recently won a couple of awards for Finding YOUR Path to Publication, had been written up in our local newspaper. Amanda reached out to me. She’d had a mystery (A Bother of Bodies) published in 2014, but it had since been delisted. Did I have any advice as one author to another? I offered to meet her for tea.
Sometime over tea, we realized that we’d met a dozen years before at Bloody Words. I gave her some advice (which, may I add, she chose not to follow), and told her the thing I missed most about living close to Toronto was live theatre. Three months later, we went to a local dinner theatre production of The Odd Couple.
It was during the intermission that I mentioned my fascination with a local cold case mystery dating back to October 1937. I’d read about it in a two-part “Remember When” feature in the SooToday.com (Sept./Oct. 2022) and had not been able to get it out of my mind. The problem was that the amount of research involved for one person was staggering. Not being from the area only served to complicate things.
And then Amanda said… “Are you talking about Helen Grier?” and I said I was. And it turned out she’d been wanting to write Helen’s story since the early 2000s. Further, she knew the owner of the cabin where Helen’s body had been found and had visited it a few years back. But, like me, she’d been daunted by the research, and worried that she wouldn’t do the story justice.
We hatched a plan. There was a Northern Arts grant program sponsored by the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Ontario. If we could get a grant to cover our expenses—editing, cover art, photos, research materials—we’d write it together. If we failed at our grant application, we’d each move on to other projects.
WE GOT THE GRANT!
And so, for the last twelve months, we’ve been researching and writing A FATAL AFFAIR: THE MURDER OF HELEN GRIER with one purpose: to launch the book on October 28th, the 89th anniversary of Helen’s death.
It’s been a whirlwind. Working with a co-author meant figuring out our individual strengths and weaknesses. It meant learning to write nonfiction when we were both used to writing mystery fiction (honestly, it is so much easier just to make stuff up). Mostly, though, it meant setting goals and staying on deadline (because the last thing we wanted to do was pay back the grant money).
But mostly, it’s been about telling Helen Grier’s story, honestly and without bias or judgment. We hope she would be proud; may she rest in peace.
A FATAL AFFAIR: THE MURDER OF HELEN GRIER
Genre: True Crime Cold Case
Release: October 2026
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link
On October 28, 1937, at a remote cabin in the Algoma District of Northern Ontario, the body of 28-year-old Helen Grier was discovered by her lover, Vernon Spencer. The cause of death was a bullet to the brain.
A married father of two, Spencer, 43, was held as a material witness for 71 days before being charged with Helen’s murder. A gruelling six-day trial in Sault Ste. Marie followed. Vernon Spencer was acquitted after a scant three hours of jury deliberation.
Was the jury wrong? Did Vernon Spencer, former professional baseball player and Michigan dairy farmer, get away with murder? Could it have been someone local who dropped in to visit and found the pretty young brunette alone and vulnerable? Or is it possible, as was suggested by Spencer’s defence team, that it was Helen Grier who fired the fatal bullet?
You be the judge.
About the authors
A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the multiple award-winning author of seven bestselling mystery novels, two books on publishing, and several short stories. Amanda Capper is a writer of short fiction, and the author of the “Maybe” mystery series (coming 2027). Learn more at judypenzsheluk.com and amandacapper.com.