Murdered Midas by Charlotte Gray

This book’s full title is Murdered Midas: A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise. It is a Biography of Harry Oates. I do not often read biographies. I am not much interested in them. However, Charlotte Gray spoke at one of the Meet the Author breakfasts held by Ben McNally Book Shop at the King Eddie. Because of her talks I bought the book and found it quite fascinating.

This book is a great way to learn a bit about Canadian History. I read a lot of history, but little about Ontario, the province where I live. There has been little written about it as far as I can see, so I was quite interested in this, especially in the history of Kirkland Lake. My father’s family came from Switzerland in the 1880’s and settle into farm life just south of North Bay. Some of the family spread out farther north into Kirkland Lake, Long Lac and Thunder Bay. This book contains some history of Kirkland Lake, New Ontario, Niagara Falls and Bahamas.

I had never heard to Harry Oakes before I heard Charlotte Gray speak at the Ben McNally breakfast. I found her talk very interesting and that is why I bought the book. I also very much enjoyed the interview she had with Steven Paikin on The Agenda and there is a link to that below.

There is a review of this book by John Law on The Standard of St. Catherine. Another review is by Megan Moore Burns on Quill and Quire. Sharon Hanna on the Canadian History site compares this book to the Missing Millionaire by Katie Daubs. It is an interesting comparison.

There is a great interview by Steve Paikin on The Agenda of TVO. Charlotte Gray on her book "Murdered Midas talks on the St. Campus of U of T. Charlotte Gray reads from her book on YouTube. This is a short but interesting video. Charlotte Gray is interviewed in Niagara Falls.

An index of the books I have reviewed are on my website at Books. I have three blogs. The first talks only about specific stocks and is called Investment Talk . The second one contains information on mostly investing and is called Investing Economics Mostly. My last blog is for my book reviews and it is called Non-Fiction Mostly. Follow me on Twitter.