From Publishers Weekly
This plodding prequel to Aubert's Arthur Ellis Award-winning series (Free Reign, etc.) takes Ellis Portal back to his youth when he studied law at the University of Toronto, years before an unexplained scandal destroyed his career on the bench. Asked to accompany friend and fellow student Gleason Adams on a midnight mission to the city morgue, Portal finds himself immersed in the abrupt disappearance of a female corpse midway through an autopsy. Portal drags his feet in helping Adams solve this inexplicable although not very compelling conundrum, because of his desire to further his own law career by interning for a respected jurist. Against an awkwardly applied backdrop of such '60s events as civil rights marches, the New York World's Fair and Beatles concerts, we follow Ellis on his half-hearted search for Adams's mysterious connection to the victim. After a gloomy opening scene and a long winter of investigation, the happily-ever-after ending somehow doesn't seem to fit the grim events and setting of this disappointing tale.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The fourth Ellis Portal novel is perhaps the best yet. This time, in a prequel to the previous installments, Aubert focuses on a brief period during the former judge's University of Toronto law-school days. The year is 1965, and the 23-year-old Portal is hoping to be accepted into an accelerated law program. Portal falls in with fellow student Gleason Adams, a wealthy, world-weary character alternately infuriating and fascinating to the more driven Portal. When Adams drags Portal to the morgue to observe an autopsy on a murder victim, the body disappears, and no record of the crime can be found. As Adams tries to convince Portal to help him solve the mystery, Portal's brother, Michele, asks him to help a Native American friend avoid the American draft. Aubert skillfully interweaves hot topics of the day into the plot, including civil rights, the underground gay scene, Vietnam, and the Beatles. A must-read for both fans of the series and newcomers. Jenny McLarin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
This book is the fourth in criminologist Rosemary Aubert's series featuring Ellis Portal, a disgraced former judge turned sleuth. A prequel to the earlier books, it is set in 1965 when Ellis Portal is 23 and a University of Toronto law student.

From the Inside Flap
"Leave Me By Dying" is the fourth in professional criminologist Rosemary Aubert's series featuring Ellis Portal, a disgraced former judge turned sleuth. This and the previous novels in the series have been optioned for a movie series. "Leave Me By Dying" is a prequel to the earlier books. It is set in 1965 when Ellis is 23 and a University of Toronto law student. One night Gleason Adams, a fellow student of unquestioned wealth but questionable character, persuades Ellis to accompany him to the city morgue for what Gleason claims is a routine autopsy, part of a law-school project they are supposed to be working on. They find the cadaver of a woman who died under circumstances they cannot figure out. Was it murder? Suicide? Or something else? When the body disappears from the morgue, Ellis is reluctantly drawn into areas of the city--and the law--that shake him out of the tweedy world of the campus and thrust him into a seedy world of questionable bars and marginal people. As he seeks answers to the mystery of the vanished corpse--its identity, cause of death, reason for death, who removed it, why and where--Ellis must deal with stolen evidence, in the form of two unusually crafted, inscribed rings, and with two families' secrets and a coroner and pathologist with agendas of their own. He pursues his search even as the imperatives of his home life and his school life require him simultaneously to juggle family relationships, politics and a need to win the respect and help of two pillars of the legal and academic establishments.

About the Author
Rosemary Aubert was born in Niagara Falls, New York, and now lives in Toronto, where her work in the criminal justice system has given her firsthand familiarity with the milieu where her novels are set. The second novel in her Ellis Portal mystery series, "The Feast of Stephen," won Canada's 1999 Arthur Ellis Award for best mystery. That and others in the series--"Free Reign" and "The Ferryman Will Be There"--have been reprinted in paperback.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this prequel to the earlier books in the series, Ellis Portal, the disgraced former judge turned sleuth, is taken back to his law school days.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This plodding prequel to Aubert's Arthur Ellis Award-winning series (Free Reign, etc.) takes Ellis Portal back to his youth when he studied law at the University of Toronto, years before an unexplained scandal destroyed his career on the bench. Asked to accompany friend and fellow student Gleason Adams on a midnight mission to the city morgue, Portal finds himself immersed in the abrupt disappearance of a female corpse midway through an autopsy. Portal drags his feet in helping Adams solve this inexplicable although not very compelling conundrum, because of his desire to further his own law career by interning for a respected jurist. Against an awkwardly applied backdrop of such '60s events as civil rights marches, the New York World's Fair and Beatles concerts, we follow Ellis on his half-hearted search for Adams's mysterious connection to the victim. After a gloomy opening scene and a long winter of investigation, the happily-ever-after ending somehow doesn't seem to fit the grim events and setting of this disappointing tale. (Oct. 1) Forecast: The unmade bed on the jacket is an odd choice, as there's little or no sex in the book, nor is sleeping a theme. The novel would've been better served by art that reflected 1960s social issues. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews