Meet the Authors’ Dogs

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When my co-author, Amanda Capper, and I first began writing A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier in October 2025, I decided to create dedicated Facebook and Instagram accounts and post something about the book on a weekly basis. (I tried BlueSky for a while as well, but abandoned that after a few months of few followers and fewer views.) Anyway…modestly pleased with the weekly results, I promised Amanda that I would post daily from January 1 through to our October 28 launch.

Amanda (she of little faith) was skeptical, but not only did I manage to do it, over the course of those months we garnered more than 500,000 views. Even so, there were times when I had to get really creative. That was certainly the case when, inspired by two “Meet the Author” posts (pic with bio), I decided to create two Meet the Author’s Dog posts. Because why shouldn’t Patches and Enzo take part in our shameless self-promotion? And now, without further ado…

Meet Patches Capper

Patches: Accepting agent pitches.

Howdy. My name is Patches. And yes, I am adorable.

My real mom died and so did my sister, Meadow, but my first furless mom, Mary Lynn B. and her friends at Northern Critters saved me, and after a thorough investigation of my new furless mom, Amanda, they handed me over to her and her really furless mate, Frank, in September 2022.
They’re lucky to have me. I guard the house from dangerous squirrels and someday I hope to take one prisoner. But I have to work on my growl. Furless man with the bag is not scared of me at all, pats me on the head and I wag my tail because I’m a guard dog with a heart.
I have learned to stay, sit, down and drop. Drop is optional. Treats are a necessity.
Sometimes I have a time-out in my rage cage, where I can bark at all the cats without Mom worrying about me chasing them. She likes cats. I do not.
I have the run of the house and the yard, plus a daily walk, because they love me and I love them. But best of all, I have tummy rubs. You can’t beat a good tummy rub.
Thank you for reading my story.
Love, Patches
🐾

Meet Enzo Sheluk

Enzo: Ready for his close-up.

Well, it’s about time Judy invited me to visit this page. After all, I’ve been a huge help as she worked on this book, making sure she takes breaks from her computer by taking me for walks.

Anyway…my name is Enzo, named after the dog in the book (and movie) in “The Art of Racing in the Rain” by Garth Stein. That Enzo was also a Golden Retriever, except he was named after race car driver Enzo Ferrari.
My doggie parents are Lyndy and Tyco, and I was born on November 21, 2024. I came home with Mike and Judy in January 2025. I do think they are VERY lucky to have a dog as wonderful as me (okay, I do shed quite a bit but hey, no one’s perfect, and besides, vacuuming can count as a break from computer work, am I right?)
My favourite activities are going for walks and car rides, playing with my stuffies, swimming at our camp on Lake Superior, and running in the snow (last winter was a doozie!). Sometimes I meet up with my sister, Georgia, and we run and wrestle. Now, that is a lot of fun! And, of course, I am a very big fan of treats.
Thanks for listening to my side of the story!
Love, Enzo

Did our Meet the Author’s Dog posts get more views than our Meet the Author posts? Some statistics are just too humbling to share.

🐾 🐾 🐾 🐾🐾

A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier a true crime, cold case mystery, launched on Wednesday, October 28, on the 89th anniversary of Helen’s death.

On October 28, 1937, at a remote cabin in the Algoma District of Northern Ontario, the body of 28-year-old Helen Grier was discovered by her lover, Vernon Spencer. The cause of death was a bullet to the brain.

A married father of two, Spencer, 43, was held as a material witness for 71 days before being charged with Helen’s murder. A gruelling six-day trial in Sault Ste. Marie followed. Vernon Spencer was acquitted after a scant three hours of jury deliberation.

Was the jury wrong? Did Vernon Spencer, former professional baseball player and Michigan dairy farmer, get away with murder? Could it have been someone local who dropped in to visit and found the pretty young brunette alone and vulnerable? Or is it possible, as was suggested by Spencer’s defence team, that it was Helen Grier who fired the fatal bullet?

You be the judge.

Now available in print and e-book at multiple booksellers. www.books2read.com/afatalaffair.

A Fatal Affair Cover Reveal (and the inspiration)

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Here’s the truth: Good book covers help to sell books. Not-so-good book covers don’t.

Of course, what constitutes a good or not-so-good book cover is largely dependent on the genre, and in the case of mystery, the sub-genre. With my upcoming release, A FATAL AFFAIR: THE MURDER OF HELEN GRIER, I was faced with more than one challenge: it was my first true crime book AND it was the first time I’d been a co-author. Which meant the decision was not entirely up to me.

Amanda Capper (my co-author) and I were lucky. The graphic artist recommended to us by another local author was Cassie Amond of Diamond Creative Studio. Cassie insisted that we spend some time on Amazon to familiarize ourselves with true crime book covers.

Helen Grier

I’ll admit I was resistant. I had a firm idea in my head. A photo of Helen Grier to the right side of the cover was a must and no amount of time spent looking at other authors’ book covers was about to change my mind.

Except it did. Turns out my “unique” cover art idea was as common in the true crime lane as a white picket fence and a floppy-eared dog is in the cozy mystery world. Who knew? (Well, Cassie, probably.)

Amanda didn’t do much better. Her vision had started with a leaf-covered trail in the woods leading up to a remote cabin. The problem was, the cabin where Helen Grier had been murdered in 1937, while still standing, now had a lovely green metal roof. And using another cabin, or worse, trying to photoshop the one in existence, just didn’t feel authentic.

We kept searching. And then I stumbled upon this cover of BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS by Mandy Matney. The moment I saw it, I was reminded of a vintage black and white photograph, shared by the current camp owner, taken from the other side of Long Lake sometime in the 1930s.

I ran the idea by Amanda, willing her to love it too.

She did. The question was this: Could Cassie Amond make it work?

Cassie immediately saw our vision. She asked for photos of trees that surrounded the camp (supplied) and got to work on the cover.

So (drumroll please): here are the covers!

 

ABOUT THE BOOK:

On October 28, 1937, at a remote cabin in the Algoma District of Northern Ontario, the body of 28-year-old Helen Grier was discovered by her lover, Vernon Spencer. The cause of death was a bullet to the brain.

A married father of two, Spencer, 43, was held as a material witness for 71 days before being charged with Helen’s murder. A gruelling six-day trial in Sault Ste. Marie followed. Vernon Spencer was acquitted after a scant three hours of jury deliberation.

Was the jury wrong? Did Vernon Spencer, former professional baseball player and Michigan dairy farmer, get away with murder? Could it have been someone local who dropped in to visit and found the pretty young brunette alone and vulnerable? Or is it possible, as was suggested by Spencer’s defence team, that it was Helen Grier who fired the fatal bullet?

You be the judge.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

A lifelong resident of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Amanda Capper is the author of A Bother of Bodies (as A. J. Capper), the first in her Maybe Mystery series. The second, A Devotion of Dads, as well as the re-release of A Bother of Bodies, is in progress for upcoming publication.

A prolific writer of short fiction, Amanda’s work can be found in Every Day Fiction, The Algomian,Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers, and Crimeucopia presents Canadian Chronicles. Amanda is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and enjoys volunteering at The Royal Canadian Legion.

A former journalist and magazine editor, Judy Penz Sheluk is the multiple award-winning author of seven bestselling mystery novels, two books on publishing, and several short stories. She is also the founder and owner of Superior Shores Press, which she established in February 2018.

Judy is a member of International Thriller Writers, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Crime Writers of Canada, where she served on the Board of Directors, most recently as Chair. A native Torontonian, Judy now splits her time between Goulais River and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

A FATAL AFFAIR: THE MURDER OF HELEN GRIER will be published in trade paperback and e-book on October 28 2026, the 89th anniversary of Helen’s death. E-book pre-order available in select markets at www.books2read.com/afatalaffair. Print pre-order coming soon!

A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier [Part II]

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I first wrote about A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier in my January first Monday post (if you missed it, you can find it here). Since that time, my co-author, Amanda Capper, and I have continued our research. Much of that research is about the police investigation, the events leading up to the trial, the trial, the verdict, and for lack of a better term, the cast of characters.

Here’s the thing. Much of what we discover, while interesting (at least to us) won’t be relevant to the book, and has nothing to do with Helen Grier. We learned, for example, that the Crown Attorney (Canada’s version of District Attorney) went back to the scene of the crime two-and-a-half months after the initial investigation. And given the remoteness of the hunt camp in Northern Ontario, the only way to access it in mid- to late-January was to fly in.

Okay, so that part is relevant. But the former journalist in me can’t leave it at that. I contacted the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre in Sault Ste. Marie (known as “the Soo,” where I live), gave the curator the approximate date of the flight and the known passengers (Crown Attorney John O’Flynn and Ontario Provincial Police Constable Thomas Crawford) and moved on to the next rabbit hole.

George H. R. Phillips

Here’s what the Bushplane museum came back with:

  • An invoice in the amount of $17.50, issued by the Provincial Air Service in January 1938, and paid by the Department of the Ontario Attorney General.
  • A flight manifest logging a 100-mile round trip flight from Sault Ste. Marie to Long Lake.
  • The plane was piloted by George H. R. Phillips.
  • Passengers were listed as Crown Attorney and Prov. Police.

All relevant enough to include in the book. But what about the history of the Ontario Provincial Air Service? The backstory on the pilot? I couldn’t resist digging deeper.

I learned that George Hector Reid Phillips was a legend in the Ontario Provincial Air Service and one of the most active pilots in the Forest Protection Division.

I also learned that the Buhl Airsedan used, registration CF-OAT, crash landed into Haw Lake on June 22, 1940, while transporting two-and-a-half-year-old Hope Matvenko from the Wawa area north of the Soo, to the Sault Ste. Marie Hospital. The pilot, doctor, and another passenger were found alive five days later, able to swim ashore, though without food or shelter. The child, who was suffering from a skull injury from a car accident, was unable to swim and drowned. The plane was left behind to rot.

In 1989, a team of volunteers retrieved what was left of the fuselage, as well as other components. These, along with a poster detailing the events leading up to, and after the crash, are on display at the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre.

Which of course led us to…

A visit to the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre:

Where we took loads of pix, copious notes, and learned lots, including this tidbit of information: The Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre is the only museum in Canada dedicated to bushplanes, and visitors come from far and wide. And here it is, right in my own backyard.

The research continues…

L to R: Curator Mary Collier, Co-author Amanda Capper, co-author Judy Penz Sheluk

 

 

Parts of the CF-OAT’S wreckage are on display at the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Judy Penz Sheluk is the multiple award-winning author of seven bestselling mystery novels, two books on publishing, and several short stories. She is also the editor/publisher of five Superior Shores Anthologies, including the 2025 Derringer- and Silver Falchion- nominated Larceny & Last Chances, and the 2026 Derringer-nominated Midnight Schemers & Daydream Believers. Find her at www.judypenzsheluk.com

 

About A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier

On October 28, 1937, Helen Grier’s body was discovered by her married lover, Vernon Spencer, at a hunt camp in Algoma, Ontario. Amanda Capper & Judy Penz Sheluk are on the case. Did Spencer, a wealthy Michigan dairy farmer and former professional baseball player, get away with murder? You be the judge. Book Launch: Oct. 28, 2026. Follow A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier on Facebook, Instagram, and BlueSky. New posts daily.

 

 

A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier [Part I]

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I first read about Helen Grier in September 2022, when my local online paper, the SooToday.com, ran a two-part article about her unsolved murder. As the author of two mystery series and seven novels, my first thought was “Here’s a possible idea for my next Marketville mystery.” (My Marketville mysteries are what I like to consider “Cold Case Cozies.”) I printed the article, stuck it inside a folder and more or less forgot about it while I researched, wrote, and published Finding YOUR Path to Publication, followed by Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie in 2023.

I say “more or less forgot about it” because every now and again I’d hunt through old newspaper archives to learn a bit more about Helen Grier. And with every thing I read, I knew one thing: Helen Grier’s story deserved to be told. And it deserved to be told as fact, not fiction. I just didn’t know how I was going to do it.

And then I met Amanda Capper, another Sault Ste. Marie author. Turned out she’d been wanting to write about Helen Grier for more than a decade. In fact, she even knew the current owner of the hunt camp where Helen Grier was murdered. We applied for Ontario Arts Council funding (to assist with research and other expenses) and were approved in October 2025. A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier, will be published on October 28, 2026, the 89th anniversary of Helen’s death.

Here’s a brief recap:

Helen Grier was a 28-year-old stenographer from Pontiac, Michigan. At the time of her death, she had been seeing 40-year-old Vernon Spencer, a married father of two. Spencer, a former professional baseball player (albeit mostly in the minor leagues), had inherited his father’s dairy farm in Wixom, Michigan, and ran the day-to-day operations. By all accounts, Grier and Spencer had been having an affair for five or six years.

In October 1937, Helen and Vernon arrived in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, and registered at a local hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Sprague. The following day they made their way to a hunting cabin on Long Lake, about 45 minutes away by car. The cabin was owned by a Dr. A.A. Holcomb of Pontiac, Michigan.

On the afternoon of October 28, 1937, Spencer, having purportedly been out looking for moose tracks, entered the cabin to discover Helen’s body lying in a pool of blood. She had been shot in her left temple. According to Spencer, he immediately went to the nearest neighbour in search of a phone. The three-mile trek, which typically took less than an hour, took Spencer four. He would later tell police that he had experienced trouble with his flashlight, missed the trail, and gotten lost in the bush.

There’s a lot more to the story, as you can guess, though the bottom line is that in January 1938, Vernon Spencer was charged with the murder of Helen Grier. His trial was held in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada, in April 1938. After a scant three-hour deliberation, Vernon Spencer was acquitted of all charges, and returned to his dairy farm in Wixom, his wife by his side.

Some believe Vernon Spencer got away with murder. Others believe Helen, with a history of depression, may have taken her own life. Still others think one of the “bachelors” (single men in the area, in search of logging work) may have been responsible.

Amanda’s opinion on whodunit and mine differ. But what we think doesn’t matter. Our job is to research historical archives, present the facts we discover without bias, and let the reader be the judge.

Follow A Fatal Affair: The Murder of Helen Grier on social media:

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The past Chair of Crime Writers of Canada, Judy Penz Sheluk is the bestselling author of seven mystery novels, five anthologies, and two award-winning books on publishing, including Finding YOUR Path to Publication and Self-publishing: The Ins & Outs of Going Indie. Find her at www.judypenzsheluk.com.

 

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