Having produced books on corrupt Vancouver police chief Walter Mulligan and disgraced Socred cabinet minister Richard Sommers, the diligent duo of Ian Macdonald and Betty O'Keefe have revived the cautionary tale of the handsome, likeable, Sophocles-quoting crook Joe Gordon who was hanged at Oakalla Prison Farm in 1957 for shooting a policeman during a botched robbery. Beaten by his father as a child, Gordon distinguished himself on death row with a haunting plea for parents of the 1950s to love their kids so they wouldn't end up facing the noose like him. "Prison taught me what I know and I'm teaching others,"; he wrote. "The only friends in life I have are criminals. Due process of law brought me into contact with them in the first instance."; Macdonald & O'Keefe's Born to Die: A Cop Killer's Final Message (Heritage $16.95) recalls the sensational murder trial of Joe Gordon and his accomplice Jimmy Carey-who didn't hang-and the unreliable nature of criminal justice during the period. [Earlier, before he could be charged with corruption, police chief Mulligan had fled to California where he became a bus driver.] Jimmy Carey, a stool pigeon, was reprieved. Former newspaper reporters, Macdonald & O'Keefe have their ninth title due this spring, Dr. Fred and the Spanish Lady (Heritage $18.95) about the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Born 1-894384-69-5; Spanish 1-894384-71-7

[BCBW Summer 2004]