Murder in the Family

How the Search for My Mother's Killer Led to My Father

By: Jeff Blackstock

Narrated by: Roger Honeywell, Nicola Correia-Damude

Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

Shortlisted for the 2021 Crime Writers of Canada Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book 

Diplomat father. Murdered mother. Emotionally neglected children. An apparent cover-up. Family dinners will never be the same.

"I think that my father murdered my mother." 

That terrible belief spurs author Jeff Blackstock to investigate the circumstances of his mother Carol's death when he was a child. Carol Blackstock died at age 24 in 1959 - poisoned by arsenic - but the cause of her death remained shrouded in mystery for decades. Jeff's father George Blackstock was a career diplomat in Canada's foreign service, posted to glamorous Buenos Aires with his wife Carol and their three children. A little more than a year after the family's arrival, the vivacious young mother, now emaciated and in terrible pain, was transferred to Montreal for treatment of a mysterious illness that proved fatal. In the following year, George Blackstock remarried, and a young woman named Ingrid became the feared stepmother to Jeff and his two siblings. 

Carol's parents soon had suspicions about their son-in-law George but were unable to get justice for their daughter. Class privilege - George was the scion of a Toronto establishment family and Carol was from modest beginnings - and an aversion to scandal all figured in an apparent cover-up. But secrets have a way of eventually disrupting all families. A damning autopsy report about arsenic poisoning, found among their grandmother's effects, leads Jeff Blackstock and his sister to horrifying revelations about their father. Eventually, they confront him and accuse him of their mother's murder. But George offers only vague explanations that don't add up. George died a broken man, mostly abandoned by his adult children.

A compelling story of a high-society murder, a heartbreaking tale of emotionally neglected children, and an inquiry into the power and privilege of the Anglo upper classes of the time, Murder in the Family chronicles the shocking legacy of deeply buried secrets and betrayal in one's own family.

©2020 Jeff Blackstock (P)2020 Penguin Random House Canada

Critic reviews

One of The Globe and Mail’s “Five new thrillers to warm up your autumn weekends”

Shortlisted for the 2021 Crime Writers of Canada Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book 

Nominated for the 2021 Heritage Toronto Book Awards 

 “[S]tunning.” —Toronto Star

“Murder in the Family hit all the high notes: a dogged investigation, a true murder mystery, and a sense of time and place that only someone who lived it—Jeff Blackstock—could achieve. A page-turner that keeps you guessing to the very end.” —Kevin Donovan, author of The Billionaire Murders  

“I don’t know which shocked me most in Jeff Blackstock’s account of his mother’s mysterious death: the cold blooded actions of his father, or the deafening silence of the Canadian diplomatic service. He writes in a measured tone without anger or blame, which makes the story all the more chilling.” —Carol Hay, Writer/Producer Frankie Drake, Murdoch Mysteries  

Painful Story

This is an excellent telling of a very sad story.

The plot is laid out in the title of the book so the tension revolves almost entirely around the author's painstaking examination of events surrounding Carol Blackstock's prolonged suffering and ultimate death, George Blackstock's motives in murdering his popular young wife, and in the children's resolution of the sordid mystery many years after her rushed burial. Perhaps the most outrageous aspect of the entire case is the participation of the Canadian diplomatic service in what was almost surely the cover-up of a potentially messy spectacle; that they had help from the attending physicians at the Montreal Neurological Institute, the coroner, the local police service and the RCMP is an unavoidable conclusion.

Roger Honeywell's narration is excellent and is perfectly suited to the telling of this nasty tale of betrayal and murder. His Spanish pronunciation is spot on.