The Innocent Canadian is a literary spy thriller and murder mystery inspired by a hidden chapter of Canadian literary history. At its heart is the decades-long romance between Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie and Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, which began in wartime London when Ritchie was stationed at Canada House and Bowen worked for Britain’s Ministry of Information. During that same period, Bowen wrote The Heat of the Day—a haunting and original spy novel. But could her inspiration have drawn from real-life entanglements too complex or dangerous to name? Picking up where history and fiction blur, The Innocent Canadian imagines a world of covert alliances, Nazi sympathizers, and “America First” conspirators, reclaiming a forgotten thread of World War II intrigue to tell a distinctly Canadian story of romance, loyalty, and quiet heroism—one with striking resonance for our times.
John Delacourt is the author of five novels, most recently The Black State. A graduate of the Humber School for Writers, his short fiction and literary criticism have appeared in The New Quarterly, The Danforth Review, The Literary Review of Canada, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Life Magazine, and The Ottawa Review of Books. He lives and writes in Ottawa.
