The Bad Detective

Having become one of Canada’s first police detectives in 1882, Nicholas Power developed a reputation as the nation’s very own super sleuth, hailed in the newspapers as a homegrown ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

He was involved in all the most heinous and shocking cases of the day, swiftly, almost superhumanly, determining the culprit and their modus operandi from only the barest of evidence. But all was not what it seemed. There was growing concern, even in courts at the time, that Power was suborning investigations, framing innocent men and was in truth very far from the ‘super sleuth’ he claimed to be.

His repeated attempts to enhance his own image regularly trumped the pursuit of justice and the innocent paid the price - sometimes with their lives.

Author and historian Bob Gordon traces Power’s career from its earliest beginnings as a lowly constable through his meteoric rise to chief of police, via some of the most scandalous criminal investigations the world has ever seen.