by Janet Smellie
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 26/97) - Within a half an hour of Dying For Gold hitting the shelves of the Yellowknife Book Cellar, 39 sales had already been made.

Staff at the store were also busy scrambling to process the 190 special orders that had been made weeks before the books arrived in town.

A good sign? Book Cellar owner Judith Drinnan, who'd only ordered 500 copies, seemed to think so.

"I'll probably have to order some more, no doubt," she told xxxNews/North late Thursday.

Dying For Gold, written by veteran Northern journalist Lee Selleck and former News/North reporter Francis Thompson, is in Selleck's own words a book that, if anything else, will "help people understand" what went on behind the bitter and deadly labor dispute at Yellowknife's Giant Mine.

With about 300-in-depth interviews under their belt with union members, company managers, strikebreakers, police officers, politicians and academics, Dying for Gold (HarperCollins, $28) is a first publication for both authors.

Thompson, who worked as a reporter at Northern News Services when the strike began, says he got involved in penning the book after he became frustrated with the way the southern media were covering the labor dispute, the deadly explosion and the RCMP investigation that followed.

"To southern journalists the labor dispute appeared to be an exotic backdrop. Their focus was that some psychopath had gotten loose in Yellowknife and killed a bunch of people," Thompson said from his home in Montreal.

"I hope for people down south that this book will help get the story out that everybody missed and help avoid this kind of disaster in the future."

Drawing on more than 2,000 pages of RCMP files obtained through the Access of Information Act -- they requested 5,000 -- the story includes for the first time Warren's word-for-word confession to the RCMP, a force the authors both in and outside the book continue to criticize for the way they handled the dispute.

"There are a lot of wounds that haven't really healed, there's still some hard questions to ask," Thompson said. "Especially relating to the role the police had. I think

most people in Yellowknife will agree that the police made a mistake by adopting a fairly high profile paramilitary approach, neglected the other role of acting as peacekeepers, their using intimidation didn't work. I think it did more damage."

As for Warren's guilt or innocence -- his appeal was argued before the NWT Court of Appeal last week -- the book raises questions about the testimony and evidence that convicted Warren.

"We did the best job we could of digging out as much information as we could. And considering it's not conclusive, we did our best to present that information as clearly and fairly," Selleck said.

"We ... let people see what they think and see if they think that the questions are really all answered ... and whether those questions should be answered in the future," he said.

"I went through this stuff for over four years, and I am not satisfied that the answers are there. On the other hand, can we prove conclusively that person A or person B or C or D did it? No."

Having the pair at opposite ends of the country is beneficial for the book tour Thompson adds. He'll be busy in mid-June promoting the book in Ontario and Quebec, while Selleck plans to promote the book in the West.