Houdini mystery never dies

Don Bell's kids

That's legendary Montreal author Don Bell on the left and his kids Daniel Bell and Valerie Bell who stood in for him at the book launch at the McGill bookstore (a much better place to launch a book than Paragraphe) of his posthmous The Man Who Killed Houdini, published by Simon Dardick's and Nancy Morelli's Roy Street-based Vehicule Press. Bell Sr. was best known for a series of brilliant essays about the city in the early 70s, published in Weekend Magazine . They were later collected into a must-read book called Saturday Night at the Bagel Factory which landed him the Leacock Award for humour. The chapter on local layabout"Do Nothing" Baker is very clever and that chapter detailing the real life rivalry between Jockey Fleming and another scalper at Peel and St. Catherine, is perhaps my favourite all-time Montreal essay. Don was slowed by emphysema and opened a book store in the country and spent many years researching the possible conspiracy behind the incident in Montreal where a young religious McGill student named Jocelyn Whitehead punched Harry Houdini in the stomach, causing his death. In his highly-recommendable book, Bell details how Jocelyn Whitehead was a loner who subsequently starved himself to death. Well this is all news because a new book The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero, written by U.S. authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman suggests that Houdini's murder was part of a huge and elaborate conspiracy to silence the escape artists who had upset people due to his habit of debunking phony spiritualists. I'd just love to hear what Bell had to say about this.