Handyman Cedric O'Toole is set up to take the fall for a murder he didn't commit. He'll need all his inventive powers to save himself.

Barbara Fradkin was born in Montreal and attended McGill, the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa, where she obtained her PhD in psychology. Her work as a child psychologist has provided ample inspiration and insight for plotting murders, and she recently left full-time practice in order to be able to devote more time to writing. Barbara has an affinity for the dark side, and her compelling short stories haunt several anthologies and magazines, including Storyteller, Iced (Insomniac Press, 2001), and the Ladies Killing Circle anthologies, including Fit to Die, Bone Dance and When Boomers Go Bad, published by RendezVous Press. Her detective series features the exasperating, infuriating Ottawa Inspector Michael Green, whose love of the hunt often interferes with family, friends and police protocol. The series includes Do or Die (2000), Once Upon a Time (2002), Mist Walker (2003), and Fifth Son (Fall 2004). Once Upon a Time was nominated for Best Novel at the Arthur Ellis Awards, Canada’s top crime writing awards, and her latest title, Fifth Son won this prestigious award in 2005. The fifth in the series, Honour Among Men, (2006), repeated the honour, the only time that consecutive novels by the same author have won the award. The sixth and seventh novels, Dream Chasers and This Thing of Darkness, followed in 2007 and 2009.

Barbara Fradkin's profile page

"Fradkin does a nice job in combining the elements of a good murder mystery with the telling of the story through Rick's character...Constant tension between the narrator and the world around him is one of the novel's greatest strengths...Though The Fall Guy is an easy read targeted at adult readers, it could work in a grade 11 or 12 literature class, particularly the workplace stream. The novel deals with the themes of stereotypes and class-bias that could prove useful for discussion. It also deals with how different people with different intellectual capacities use language to construct meaning, which would also prov[e] useful for discussion. Recommended."

CM Magazine