Canada may play second fiddle to the United States in geopolitics, but its writers are second to none. The books profiled in this post are all mysteries published this year. The locations, fictional and real, urban and remote, often play as big a role in the stories as the humans do. Mostly dark as a Saskatchewan winter night, these tales show a grimmer side of the "nice neighbor" to the north.
In his series opener, Scott Thornley gives us a detective hero reminiscent of P.D. James' Adam Dalgliesh. Detective Superintendent MacNeice and his team are trying to find the who and why of a murdered violinist, artfully displayed in a beach house not far from the fictional, industrial city of Dundurn in southern Ontario. There's backstory aplenty, almost as good as Walter Mosley, and just a whiff of romance. Those who like James and Mosley with a touch of melancholy may find much to like in Erasing Memory
Kala Stonechild and her boss, Sgt. Rouleau, are off at a breakneck pace in Brenda Chapman's Bleeding Darkness. The McKenna family is gathering to bid farewell to their patriarch in Kingston, Ontario, but there are troubling undercurrents, including an unsolved murder 14 years distant and one much more recent. One of the sons is a likely suspect, but how to prove or disprove it? In addition to the page-turning plot, there's good development of the protagonist's personal lives, and Kingston is as much a part of the story as any of the other characters.
The title of Tin Men by Mike Knowles refers to police officers who are more badge than heart, which is what the three officers assigned to a murder case pretend to be, but aren't. All connected to the victim and all bent in their own way, they break heads and rules to find the killer of one of their own. For those who like their protagonists cynical and stories bleak, especially fans of Dennis Lehane, Tin Men may be right up your very dark alley.
Rockton, perched in the Canadian Yukon, does not technically exist, and its residents would rather not attract any kind of attention. In Kelley Armstrong's This Fallen Prey, however, they let in an accused serial killer, and disquiet follows. People start dying violently, and the new resident claims innocence of both the most recent crimes and the ones that led him to Rockton. Not for the faint of heart, this mystery has hairpin turns and well-developed characters.
Down the means streets of Vancouver walks PI David Wakeland in Cut You Down by Sam Wiebe. A college student has disappeared with money that belongs to the university and fled with her lover. Wakeland, hired by a professor with a romantic interest in the student, tracks her down and reports back. Soon after, the student is dead and the professor is missing. Trying to serve justice in a just way, Wakeland echoes Sam Spade in this hardboiled, noirish, and violent tale.
For lighter fare, turn to Last Song Sung by David A. Poulson. Fifty years after the disappearance of an up-and-coming singer at a club in Calgary, her granddaughter hires detectives Cullen and Cobb to discover her fate. Fine-tuned character studies are the draw of this novel, along with the relationship between the detectives that goes beyond the usual. Other reasons to like this novel: humor and tidbits of Canadian musical history.
Have more mysteries set in the True North? Tell us about them in the comments.
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