On a morning in early June 1885, a gunshot rolled across a small peninsula jutting into Kootenay Lake, a large but remote body of water isolated by towering mountains in southeastern British Columbia. A young Cornish miner named Thomas Hammill lay dying and his alleged attacker, Robert Sproule, had fled, only to be tracked down and arrested. No one could have known at the time, but this was the beginning of a legal saga that would play out over the next year and a half, from an initial hearing on the shores of Kootenay Lake, to a lengthy trial in Victoria, and on to the Supreme Court of Canada. The case became an international cause célèbre drawing in the highest political and diplomatic officials in Ottawa, London and Washington. Back in his death row cell, Sproule experienced what one newspaper labelled “the refinement of cruelty,” as he endured eight reprieves and nine execution dates. Relying on court documents, government files, private correspondence, diaries and diplomatic records, A Refined Cruelty brings the fateful tale of Thomas Hammill and Robert Sproule’s lethal contact to life. With never-before-told detail and insight into the early days of BC’s justice system that remains fascinating and remarkably relevant, Reimer’s latest investigation into historical true crime provides a cautionary tale that human foibles and error cannot be avoided in any system. In the search for a more just society, such a tale must be remembered when calls rise for harsher laws, stiffer penalties and the weakening of due process.