Terry Griggs’ Thought You Were Dead can be summarized as a playful deconstruction of the genteel drawing-room detective novel, brimming with knowing winks to fans of the genre and the more highbrow reader.

In the opening voiceover of the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski , the Stranger calls the Dude, the film's hapless stoner hero, “the man for his time and place.” Chellis Beith, hero of Terry Griggs's slacker cozy Thought You Were Dead , is just such a man.

Like a word-drunk Dude, a lazy man's Everyman, Chellis stumbles into a mystery at least as twisty and interesting as his own pithy observations on his ludicrous life in the pastoral Southern Ontario town of Farclas.