Blood in the Water: True Crime Story of Small-Town Revenge - Perfect for True Crime Fans & Book Club Discussions" （注：根据要求： 1. 符合SEO规范，包含关键词"true crime story"和"small-town revenge" 2. 原为英文标题无需翻译 3. 增加了使用场景"for True Crime Fans & Book Club Discussions"）

Cape Breton writer Silver Donald Cameron’s latest and last book, he died in June, two months before it was released, is a brilliant examination of a small fishing community, the legal system, Acadian history, labour history, people doing their best to get by and one man, described by the author as “a manipulative genus, like Shakespeare’s Iago, bringing out the worst in people, playing on their inherent weaknesses, their cowardice and cupidity,” who ultimately meets his own grisly end possibly dropped to the bottom of the sea affixed to an anchor by three local fisherman pushed to the limit of their toleration with his criminal behaviour and brazen devious threatening demeanour.Cameron sat through the 2014 trial of one of the accused and then spent years trying to analyze what happened and why. He interview dozens of locals and his skills as a journalist as well as being a trusted person, which he was, allowed the tale to unfold. The book chapters switch from the courtroom where James Landry was being tried for the second degree murder of Phillip Boudreau to chapters that delve into the criminality of Boudreau and how he and the community came to be.To some Boudreau was a “rustic Robin Hood” who would steal lobsters out of someone else’s traps then sell them on the cheap or give them away to anyway he felt like. He made no bones about any of this and would often tell the fisherman he stole them from. If they went to the RCMP about it, he would come back the next day in his powerboat, Midnight Slider, and cut your traps loose from their floating buoys. Then nobody could get them.According to Cameron “some people loved Phillip... he was generous to old people” but others “hated and feared him...if you crossed him he might threaten to sink your boat, shoot you, burn down your house. He could make you fearful for the safety of your daughter.”Though the book is about murder, (ultimately ruled manslaughter) Cameron’s stylistic prose tempers the violent aspects of the story. For instance, writing about the villagers, “most people avoided Phillip, carefully steering around him the way a lobster boat navigates a rocky shoal.”Cameron lived in Isle Madame, a remote yet beautiful region in eastern Cape Breton where the story is set. It would be a surprise if anyone else could or would have attempted to write this book. Midway through the writing he questioned whether he should continue and a chance encounter in an airport with another resident and successful businessperson who said, “you’ll be fair and honest, and the book will help the island heal,” encouraged him to continue.The book comes across as a totally fair, honest, and frank account of a person who conducted a “one-man crime wave” for literally his entire life. When Boudreau wasn’t stealing tools, four-wheelers, anything, from the neighbours and boasting about it he was running and hiding from the RCMP or Fisheries officers, or spending time in jail. Half of his adult life was spent in prison where he boasted he enjoyed the three square meals a day.Cameron also picks apart the Nova Scotia legal system and how “the formal judicial system constantly scolded the accused for ‘taking the law into their own hand’ without ever recognizing that the accused had repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to persuade the authorities to deal with Phillip.”In one incredibly telling section in the book Cameron summarizes the labour history of Cape Breton and ends with a quote from a well known labour leader and coal miner who later went into law and ironically coined the terrible, wrong and glib phrase, “this case is about murder for lobster,” when he helped prosecute the case against the accused. According to Cameron, this phrase, “will stick to this case like a burr to a sheepskin. It will be in headlines and stories all over the world.” And that it did and it wasn’t murder for lobsters.The book is not without its humor. In many situations Boudreau escaped the law in an almost Keystone Kops kind of way. He scrambling into barns, hid out in basements, overturned boats, snow banks and in one case under a pile of kelp as four Mounties scoured a beach for him, one even talking a moment to relieve himself on a pile of seaweed Boudreau was buried under.Cameron’s book is an exemplary piece of writing that delves into the man, the community and various systems that failed him and the poor people that suffered his unrelenting torment. Many people could not sleep at night for fear Boudreau would live up to his malevolent promises to burn you and your children out. Various opinions are put forward as to his underlying mental state but for someone scared to sleep at night or let your daughter walk to the neighbour’s house for fear of attack it didn’t matter.Blood in the Water is a true life crime story, a legal thriller, an indictment of the legal system and a guidebook on ways that might have lead to a better outcome for all involved, including for many of Boudreau’s neighbours who in 2013 “would not be entirely surprised if he walked out of the ocean tomorrow, coated in seaweed and dripping with brine, smiling.”