Raymond Knister left behind a number of manuscripts following his sudden death at age 33. In 2006, Black Moss released the never before published There Was A Mr. Cristi. This new work, also found and never published, except in part in a short story, places the focus upon Knister's years of driving a taxi in Chicago. This was during the Roaring Twenties, and one can only imagine what life was like in a city dominated by Capone. Where this novel differs from his others is that it examines life in a large American city with all its hustle and drive for success. In the underbelly of a city marked by crime, this young taxi driver ventures, and out of it emerges with vivid memories. Is it autobiographical? It certainly is, including one tale of being abducted by Chicago thugs.

Raymond Knister (1899-1932) was a Canadian novelist, short story writer and poet who drowned in Lake St. Clair as he was becoming internationally recognized. A a friend and contemporary of Morley Callaghan, Mr. Knister had just begun to win major prizes, and had been published across the Atlantic alongside Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. He had also edited the first collection of Canadian short stories, and was at work on a number of books before his untimely death. A practitioner of the poetic school known as “imagism,” many of his works evoke rural themes, often depicting life in Southwestern Ontario in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

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