Canadian author Paul Quarrington has died after a short battle with cancer. He was well-known up north but never got the acclaim he deserved down here. He wrote two of the best and and funniest non-fiction books about fishing ever (Fishing With My Old Guy, From the Far Side of the River: Chest-Deep in Little Fish and Big Ideas )… along with a bunch of novels that have earned him well-deserved comparisons to John Irving and Robertson Davies. I was fortunate to work with Paul for a year on the series MISSING, where he was an odd fit and he knew it. His off-beat humor and literary sensibilities just didn't mesh with a typical Lifetime detective series, which was a shame because he was a hell of a nice guy and a pleasure to work with. He will be missed.
I just read his collection “Original Six”. Sad news indeed.
His novel, King Leary, which won the CBC Canada Reads contest last year and brought it back to the attention of Canadians, rates as one of my favourite hockey novels. He’s also written a baseball novel, Home Game, and Whale Music, a novel about rock ‘n’ roll.