The Body under the Floor

Construction workers dismantling an old house in the heart of Victoria British Columbia find a limousine of '30's vintage sealed behind a wall. The back seat holds the remains of a body. Detective Leonard Ross must search out people who lived and worked in the house 50 years earlier--many of whom are now in nursing-homes--to find out the strange family story that might have resulted in a murder. As he finds himself close to a solution, the body-count starts to climb.

Construction workers dismantling an old house in the heart of Victoria British Columbia find an elegant old car of '30's vintage sealed behind a wall. In the back seat are the remains of a body, a female. Detective-Sergeant Leonard Ross must search out people who lived and worked in the house 50 years earlier -- many of whom are now in nursing homes--to find out the strange family story that might have resulted in a murder. The present owner of the house is now an old woman, unable to speak, living in an extended-care facility. The only other survivor of the family, the Baroness LeBreton refuses to answer questions. As he feels that the solution is getting closer, the body-count suddenly starts to climb.

Gary Brandstadt grew up in the Ottawa Valley, Ontario Canada. He got a Masters in Social Work and entered a long and rich career in Social Work for 40 years, with forays into theatre production, musical/opera performance, and design. He moved to the west-coast when he was 40, and immediately became enamoured of the idiosyncratic history and charm of Victoria, British Columbia. This city is founded on the series of dramatic gold-rushes of the 19th century which drew people from all over the world, and basically established the province. His career specialization at that point was seniors'-care, where he found he was privy to hundreds of stories of people struggling to get away from troubled & dangerous parts of the world, dysfunctional family dynamics, wild acts of derring-do, strange personal tales and family-myths. He was on the sidelines of four murders that occupied the front-pages for months in decades past. The natural form for telling these stories, using the unusual history of Victoria, seemed to be the murder-mystery.