Canadian Detectives

The Tenderness of Wolves: A Novel

A brilliant and breathtaking debut that captivated readers and garnered critical acclaim in the United Kingdom, The Tenderness of Wolves was long-listed for the Orange Prize in fiction and won the Costa Award (formerly the Whitbread) Book of the Year.

The year is 1867. Winter has just tightened its grip on Dove River, a tiny isolated settlement in the Northern Territory, when a man is brutally murdered. Laurent Jammett had been a voyageur for the Hudson Bay Company before an accident lamed him four years earlier. The same accident afforded him the little parcel of land in Dove River, land that the locals called unlucky due to the untimely death of the previous owner.

A local woman, Mrs. Ross, stumbles upon the crime scene and sees the tracks leading from the dead man's cabin north toward the forest and the tundra beyond. It is Mrs. Ross's knock on the door of the largest house in Caulfield that launches the investigation. Within hours she will regret that knock with a mother's love -- for soon she makes another discovery: her seventeen-year-old son Francis has disappeared and is now considered a prime suspect.

In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the crime and to the township -- Andrew Knox, Dove River's elder statesman; Thomas Sturrock, a wily American itinerant trader; Donald Moody, the clumsy young Company representative; William Parker, a half-breed Native American and trapper who was briefly detained for Jammett's murder before becoming Mrs. Ross's guide. But the question remains: do these men want to solve the crime or exploit it?

One by one, the searchers set out from Dove River following the tracks across a desolate landscape -- home to only wild animals, madmen, and fugitives -- variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for seventeen years, and a forgotten Native American culture before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good.

In an astonishingly assured debut, Stef Penney deftly weaves adventure, suspense, revelation, and humor into an exhilarating thriller; a panoramic historical romance; a gripping murder mystery; and, ultimately, with the sheer scope and quality of her storytelling, an epic for the ages.

Bones to Ashes: A Novel

Temperance Brennan, like her creator Kathy Reichs, is a brilliant, sexy forensic anthropologist called on to solve the toughest cases. But for Tempe, the discovery of a young girl's skeleton in Acadia, Canada, is more than just another assignment. Evangaline, Tempe's childhood best friend, was also from Acadia. Named for the character in the Longfellow poem, Evangaline was the most exotic person in Tempe's eight-year-old world. When Evangaline disappeared, Tempe was warned not to search for her, that the girl was "dangerous." Thirty years later, flooded with memories, Tempe cannot help wondering if this skeleton could be the friend she lost so many years ago. And what is the meaning of the strange skeletal lesions found on the bones of the young girl? Meanwhile, Tempe's beau, Ryan, investigates a series of cold cases. Three girls dead. Four missing. Could the New Brunswick skeleton be part of the pattern? As Tempe draws on the latest advances in forensic anthropology to penetrate the past, Ryan hunts down a serial predator.

The Best American Mystery Stories 2007 (The Best American Series (TM))

The best-selling author Carl Hiaasen takes the reins for the eleventh edition of this series, featuring twenty of the past year's most distinguished tales of mystery, crime, and suspense.

Laura Lippman introduces us to a suburban soccer mom who moonlights as a call girl and who has a fateful encounter with a former client at her son's soccer game. Ridley Pearson traces a famous author of horror tales who becomes trapped in a real one after his wife vanishes while jogging. Joyce Carol Oates travels to a New Jersey racetrack where the animals that break down are of the two-legged type. Lawrence Block tells the story of Keller, a hitman for hire who happens to live in Greenwich Village, loves spicy food, and collects stamps as a hobby. And Scott Wolven plunges us into the world of an ex-con who takes a job at a private and very illegal Nevada racetrack where each day millions are won and lost. Mostly lost.

As Carl Hiaasen notes in his introduction, "The stories in this collection would do honor to any anthology of short literature. More than transcending the genre of crime, they blow away its nebulous boundaries." The Best American Mystery Stories 2007 is a powerful collection certain to delight mystery aficionados and all lovers of great fiction.

A Nurse's Story

The team of nurses that Tilda Shalof found herself working with in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a big-city hospital was known as “Laura’s Line.” They were a bit wild: smart, funny, disrespectful of authority, but also caring and incredibly committed to their jobs. Laura set the tone with her quick remarks. Frances, from Newfoundland, was famous for her improvised recipes. Justine, the union rep, wore t-shirts emblazoned with defiant slogans, like “Nurses Care But It’s Not in the Budget.” Shalof was the one who had been to university. The others accused her of being “sooo sensitive.”

They depended upon one another. Working in the ICU was both emotionally grueling and physically exhausting. Many patients, quite simply, were dying, and the staff strove mightily to prolong their lives. With their skill, dedication, and the resources of modern science, they sometimes were almost too successful. Doctors and nurses alike wondered if what they did for terminally-ill patients was not, in some cases, too extreme. A number of patients were admitted when it was too late even for heroic measures. A boy struck down by a cerebral aneurysm in the middle of a little-league hockey game. A woman rescued – too late – from a burning house. It all took its toll on the staff.

And yet, on good days, they thrived on what they did. Shalof describes a colleague who is managing a “crashing” patient: “I looked at her. Nicky was flushed with excitement. She was doing five different things at the same time, planning ahead for another five. She was totally focused, in her element, in control, completely at home with the chaos. There was a huge smile on her face. Nurses like to fix things. If they can.”

Shalof, a veteran ICU nurse, reveals what it is really like to work behind the closed hospital curtains. The drama, the sardonic humour, the grinding workload, the cheerful camaraderie, the big issues and the small, all are brought vividly to life in this remarkable book.


From the Hardcover edition.

No Time for Goodbye

The house was deathly quiet. That was the first sign that something was terribly wrong. Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge woke that morning to find herself alone. Her family—mother, father, and brother—had vanished without a word, without a note, without a trace. Twenty-five years later, Cynthia is still looking for answers. Now she is about to learn the devastating truth.

From critically acclaimed author Linwood Barclay comes a new suspense thriller that strikes to the core of our most primal fear. What if you woke one day to find your entire life had changed? If everyone you loved had disappeared overnight without so much as a chance to ask why?

Cynthia and Terry Archer still live in Milford, Connecticut, not far from the old Bigge house on Hickory Street. With a solid marriage and a young daughter, the Archers seem on track for a successful future. But the questions raised by Cynthia’s past still haunt her, and her obsession to find the answers threatens to destroy everything they’ve worked for. For Cynthia, there can be no closure until she finds out why her family disappeared—and how they could have left her behind.

Terry thinks the segment on the popular TV crime-stopper program Deadline is a mistake. But his wife hopes that someone watching will have a lead to her missing family. Sure enough, it’s Cynthia who spots the strange car cruising the neighborhood, hears the untraceable phone calls, and discovers the ominous “gifts.” And as Cynthia’s nerves begin to unravel, no one’s innocence is guaranteed, not even her own. By the time the first body is found, it’s clear that her past is more of a mystery than she ever imagined—or may ever survive.

Someone has returned to this Connecticut town to finish what was started twenty-five years ago. And by the time Terry and Cynthia discover the killer’s shocking identity, it will be too late even for goodbye.

CSI: Miami: Cut and Run: CSI: Miami

By air, sea, and land the members of the Miami-Dade Crime Lab are called out. In a field outside the Everglades a balloon has just set down; the lone man inside the basket is dead -- an apparent suicide. A yacht riddled with bullets limps into the Port of Miami; only a gravely wounded hijacker survives, confessing that there are drugs somewhere on board, but he can't find them. A local journalist, looking to break out of the rat race with a novel based on the people he covers on his beat, is found dead.

In the yacht's galley is a record-setting sunfish that seems to be the key piece of evidence to just what was being smuggled on the ship, yet the lab is stumped when they discover no more than the normal parasites infesting the fish. A raunchy video of a citrus heiress having sex in a public place gives her the motive to kill the journalist-turned-novelist, but she has an alibi. All small pieces of the puzzles that Horatio Caine and the member of his team have to unravel to find out why all these people were killed. Before it is over the members of the Miami-Dade Crime Lab are caught up in an intrigue that reaches to the heart of Castro's Cuba.

Stone Rain

Metropolitan newspaper writer Zack Walker has a knack for stumbling onto deadly stories. But it’s one that his good friend Trixie Snelling doesn’t want told that’s about to unleash a storm of trouble. As a professional dominatrix in the suburbs, Trixie has her share of secrets, but Zack has no idea what she’s really hiding when a local newspaperman threatens to do an exposé on her…not until Zack finds a dead body strapped to the bondage cross in her basement dungeon.

Now Zack is implicated in a murder, Trixie is missing, and everything he thought he knew about his friend, his town, even his own marriage, reveals a darker side. Zack’s twisted trail to the truth will lead to a long-unsolved triple homicide, bikers, drug wars, and a stone-cold killer hell-bent on revenge. It’s a story that’s already cost him his job and possibly his wife, and, if Zack’s not very lucky, it will cost him his life.

The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 (The Best American Series)

"[Most of] these stories are portraits, in styles ranging from sly to harrowing, of how crimes occurred ... If you like all your characters living at the end of a story, this may not be the book for you." -- from the introduction by Scott Turow

Best-selling author Scott Turow takes the helm for the tenth edition of this annual, featuring twenty-one of the past year's most distinguished tales of mystery, crime, and suspense.

Elmore Leonard tells the tale of a young woman who's fled home with a convicted bank robber. Walter Mosley describes an over-the-hill private detective and his new client, a woman named Karma. C. J. Box explores the fate of two Czech immigrants stranded by the side of the road in Yellowstone Park. Ed McBain begins his story on role-playing with the line "'Why don't we kill somebody?' she suggested." Wendy Hornsby tells of a wild motorcycle chase through the canyons outside Las Vegas. Laura Lippman describes the "Crack Cocaine Diet." And James Lee Burke writes of a young boy who may have been a close friend of Bugsy Siegel.

As Scott Turow notes in his introduction, these stories are "about crime -- its commission, its aftermath, its anxieties, its effect on character." The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 is a powerful collection for all readers who enjoy fiction that deals with the extremes of human passion and its dark consequences.

Sorrow Without End: a Medieval Mystery (Medeival Mystery)

As the autumn storms of 1271 ravage the East Anglian coast, Crowner Ralf finds the corpse of a brutally murdered soldier in the woods near Tyndal Priory. The dagger in the man's chest is engraved with a strange, cursive design, and the body is wrapped in a crusader's cloak. Was this the act of a member of the Assassin sect or was the weapon meant to mislead him in finding the killer

Ralf's decision to take the corpse to the priory for advice may be reasonable, but he is soon caught up in a maelstrom of conflict, both personal and political. The priory is deeply divided over whether to purchase a relic, a decision that endangers both Prioress Eleanor's leadership and the future of the hospital. Brother Thomas becomes a suspect in the murder itself, and Ralf must choose between the demands of his brother, the sheriff, and loyalty to a friend.

Meanwhile, the murderer watches and waits.

The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar: Solving the Oak Island Mystery

When the Order of Knights Templar was destroyed in 1307, the secret society supposedly had vast wealth that was rumored to include the genealogies of David and Jesus and other religious artifacts as well as your run-of-the-mill gold and jewels. Over 200 years ago, the site of an elaborate vault was discovered by three teenagers on Oak Island, Nova Scotia, which was determined to have been built sometime between the 14th and 16th centuries. Author Steven Sora has been investigating both the Order and the vault for over 17 years, and The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar details his fascinating theory of where the Templar's hoard went and what is buried under Oak Island. If you enjoy real-life mystery, the intrigues of secret societies, or thoughtfully researched revisionist history, this one's for you. --P. Randall Cohan

A compelling argument that connects the lost treasure of the Knights Templar to the mysterious money pit on Oak Island, Nova Scotia, that has baffled treasure hunters for two centuries 

• Fascinating occult detective work linking the Cathars, the Scottish Masons, and Renne-le-Chateau to the elusive treasure pit on Oak Island 

• Draws on new evidence recently unearthed in Italy, France, and Scotland to provide a compelling solution to one of the world's most enduring mysteries 

When the Order of Knights Templar was ruthlessly dissolved in 1307 by King Philip the Fair of France it possessed immense wealth and political power, yet none of the treasure the Templars amassed has ever been found. Their treasure is rumored to contain artifacts of spiritual significance retrieved by the order during the Crusades, including the genealogies of David and Jesus and documents that trace these bloodlines into the royal bloodlines of Merovingian France. 

Placing a Scottish presence in the New World a century before Columbus, Steven Sora paints a credible scenario that has the Sinclair clan of Scotland transporting the wealth of the Templars--entrusted to them as the Masonic heirs of the order--to a remote island off the shores of present-day Nova Scotia. The mysterious money pit there is commonly believed to have been built before 1497 and has guarded its secret contents tenaciously despite two centuries of determined efforts to unearth it. All of these efforts (one even financed by American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) have failed, thanks to an elaborate system of booby traps, false beaches, hidden drains, and other hazards of remarkable ingenuity and technological complexity.