January 2008

Michael Blair, The Dells: A Joe Shoe Mystery

No sooner does Joe Shoe arrive in his old Toronto neighbourhood than he becomes embroiled in a murder investigation. The victim lived in the neighbourhood thirty-five years earlier, but moved away while still a suspect in a series of rapes that occurred in the very ravine in which he was murdered. Shoe’s inquiries become intensely personal as old friends, girlfriends, and even family members seem to have reasons to want the man dead. Compelling, deeply emotional, and at times even disturbing, The Dells is an accomplished novel by one of Canada’s rising stars of crime fiction.

Mass market paperback

Dundurn Press (A Castle Street Mystery)

ISBN: 978-1-55002-752-5

January 2008

$12.99

Rick Blechta, A Case of You

Meet Andy Curran, drummer in a struggling jazz trio. When a distinctly odd street person sings at an open mic night at the club where the trio is playing, it's clear they've found their salvation: a vocalist of incredible talent. But after Olivia Saint departs one night as abruptly as she'd arrived, Andy sets out to discover where she has gone and who she really is. The answers are not simple…and quickly turn deadly.

"Rick Blechta plays his readers the way his musician hero performs – with finesse, passion and fireworks." – Don Graves, Hamilton Spectator

Jeff Buick, Delicate Chaos

Banking shouldn’t be fatal.

Leon Hewitt, a VP with a Washington DC bank, is asked to okay a corporate restructuring, but balks when people start dying of unnatural causes…like murder.

As Leona struggles to stay ahead of a psychotic killer, the one man she can trust and who could help her, is fighting for his life in Kenya.

Mass market paperback
Dorchester Publishing

ISBN: 978-0-8439-6038-9

February 2008

$9.99 (US$7.99)

Terry Carroll, Snow Candy: A Carl North Mystery

Estranged from his wife, relocated to St. Thomas, Ontario, and newly promoted to sergeant, police detective Carl North has a team to run to solve a murder/arson as well as a mysterious fire at a strip club. But can North shake his lone-wolf ways? The Pythons (a biker gang modeled loosely on the real-life Bandidos, charged with Ontario’s largest mass murder) are involved. A stripper whom North has been protecting is threatened. A police officer resigns under a cloud. Fast-paced and violent, Snow Candy is a story of revenge, ruthless competition, and very human police officers.

Trade paperback

Mercury Press

ISBN: 978-1-155128-135-3

March 2008

$17.95

Vicki Delany, Whiteout

After a painful family drama, Toronto computer expert Joanna Hastings takes a cabin in the remote woods of Northern Ontario to make sense out of her life and her shattered relationship with her daughter. But the town of Hope River is not content to let her lick her wounds. The isolated community has its share of secrets…and strange stories.

2001 EPPIE award winner for Best Mainstream Novel, Whiteout is being re-released by Worldwide Library. Note that the book is not available through retail – just through book clubs and directly from http://www.eharlequin.com/ (Harlequin/Worldwide Library).

Mass market paperback

Worldwide Library

ISBN: 978-0-373-26624-1

January 2008

$6.99 (US$5.99)

Lyn Hamilton, The Chinese Alchemist: An Archaeological Mystery

Toronto antique dealer Lara McClintoch is asked by a friend to purchase a silver box dating to eighth century T'ang dynasty China. The extremely valuable box contains an alchemical formula for the elixir of immortality. Minutes before the auction, the box is withdrawn from sale, only to reappear in China at another auction house. Lara travels to Beijing to attempt once again to purchase it. This time, the box is stolen. When a rival for the box dies mysteriously, and the man who may have stolen it is murdered, Lara travels to Xi'an to find not only the box, but to unmask a murderer.

Mass market paperback
Berkley Prime Crime
ISBN: 978-0-425-21906-5
January 2008
$10.99

Maureen Jennings, The K Hand Shape: A Christine Morris Mystery

Christine Morris is awakened early on a chill November morning by a phone call from one of her colleagues, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Leo Forgach. His daughter, Deirdre, is missing. Despite the fact that she and the doctor have never seen eye to eye, Christine agrees to help in the search for Deirdre…only to discover her brutally strangled body in the lake.

Heartbroken, Leo tells Christine that his daughter was deaf and had recently given birth to a child she had deliberately ensured would be deaf. As a militant supporter of the Deaf Culture, Deirdre wanted a deaf child to make a political statement. Although some people supported her stand, many did not – including Deirdre‘s own father. Christine must use her new kills as a forensic profiler to discover the killer.

Trade paperback
Dundurn Press (A Castle Street Mystery)

ISBN: 978-1-55002-763-1
January 2008
$22.99

Dan Kalla, Blood Lies

Ben Dafoe is desperate to find out how his blood wound up on the walls of the brutal murder scene of his ex-fiancée. Going on the run from Seattle to Vancouver, the young ER doctor assumes he is looking for his missing-and-presumed-dead identical twin who, like his former fiancée, was another casualty of drug addiction. But Ben’s frantic journey takes him through the underworld of the drug trade on both sides of the border and deep into a deceitful web where he eventually learns that, figuratively and literally, sometimes blood lies.

Mass market paperback
Forge Books
ISBN: 978-0-7653-5792-2
March 2008
$9.99 (US$7.99)

Debra Purdy Kong, Fatal Encryption

Dressed as Kermit the Frog on Halloween night, unemployed accountant Alex Bellamy wonders where his life went wrong. It could be worse, though – a few miles away, Zachary Ternoway is stabbed at his front door. In need of cash, Alex agrees to help catch a computer prankster at McKinleys’ Department Store. But things turn serious when someone vows to permanently encrypt the store’s data unless ten million dollars is handed over in two weeks. Alex discovers a connection between the murder and the extortion threat, but time’s running out, people are questioning his competency, and a killer is threatening his life.

Trade paperback

Gypsy Moon Press

ISBN: 978-0-9699211-1-0

February 2008

$19.95

José Latour, Comrades in Miami

Colonel Victoria Valiente, a highly regarded officer in Cuba's General Directorate of Intelligence, is privately weary of both life in Havana and a regime that has far outstayed its welcome. She wants out, and if anyone knows the cat-and-mouse game she needs to play to get off the island, it’s Valiente. But she is not the only master machinator at work. In Miami, the FBI has its own covert operation. They need someone to travel back to Cuba to gather information. Someone who cannot refuse them…

“An impressive mind-bender” – Entertainment Weekly

Trade paperback
McClelland & Stewart
ISBN 978-0-7710-4662
February 2008
$22.99

April Lindgren, Headline: Murder

The ink might just run red if journalist Pia Keyne keeps putting her life at risk as she investigates the murder of a politician killed in the attics of Queen’s Park. What starts out as a simple headline story quickly turns into something more dangerous as the killings continue and Pia’s investigative skills lead her into the world of Nazi art theft, forgery, drugs, and murder. Having spent years trying to overcome the painful secrets of her own past, Pia must now choose who to trust, who to love, and who to track down as a possible source – for her story, and for murder.

Mass market paperback
Second Story Press
ISBN: 978-1-897187-41-8
March 2008
$11.95

Linda L. Richards, Death Was the Other Woman

“You’re about to meet a new great dame of crime fiction in Death Was the Other Woman,” says bestselling author Linda Fairstein. “Linda L. Richards does a stunning job in creating a character with a voice and eye right out of a 1930s L.A. hard-boiled classic: guns and gams, booze and bodies, peepers and perps. Move over, Sam Spade: Kitty Pangborn is on the case.”

Publishers Weekly calls Death Was the Other Woman “a winning hard- boiled 1931 whodunit.”

Hardcover

Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin’s Press)
ISBN: 978-0312377700
January 2008

$29.95

Audio CD & audio cassette
Brilliance Audio

ISBN (CD): 978-1423349716

ISBN (cassette): 978-1423349686

M.M. Stoddart, The Chaparral Murders: Dollar Store Justice
From the dense woods of the Appalachian Mountains comes this true tale of deception, murder, and greed in a tiny West Virginia town. M. M. Stoddart returns to the scene of the decades-old murders of Glenn Roberts and his teenaged son, Timothy, to conduct a new investigation of the biggest homicide case in Tucker County history – one shrouded by suspicion and doubt for more than twenty years.
Glenn and Timothy were killed by near-contact shotgun blasts from the same weapon on the same night. But their bodies were found eight miles and three weeks apart. Stoddart reopens the cold case, soon finding that the murders were much more than the simple botched robbery that West Virginia authorities had previously concluded. New information uncovers a vast web of missing evidence, deceit, and family intrigue.

Trade paperback
iUniverse
ISBN: 978-0-595-44329-1
January 2008
US$23.95

Richard A. Thompson, Fiddle Game: A Herman Jackson Mystery
In this debut novel in the Herman Jackson bail bondsman series, Herman, a St. Paul, Minnesota, bail bondsman and former Detroit bookie, is doing a good job of living down his shady past. But when he accepts a cursed 400-year-old violin as security for a bond and then witnesses its owner’s murder, he is plunged into a world of con artists, crooked cops, and urban Gypsies who want the violin and at least one crazy person who simply wants him dead. And suddenly his old life back in Detroit seems rather tame.
Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has said of it it: "Smart, funny, well-paced, and full action, it delivers on every level.”