July 2008

Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye

Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge awoke one morning to find herself alone, her entire family vanished. No note, no trace of them. Now, 25 years later, she may learn the truth. But sometimes it's better not to know.

Says Tess Gerritsen: "No Time for Goodbye is one of the best thrillers of the year! Utterly riveting, it will grab you on page one and won't let you go until the final, stunning conclusion."

Mass market paperback

Bantam

ISBN: 978-0-553590425

August 2008

$8.99

Linwood Barclay, Too Close to Home

In a quiet suburban neighborhood, in a house only one door away, a family is brutally murdered for no apparent reason. And you think to yourself: It could have been us. And you start to wonder: What if we’re next?

Promise Falls isn’t the kind of community where a family is shot to death in their own home. No one is more shocked than their next-door neighbours, Jim and Ellen Cutter. They visited for the occasional barbecue and their son, Derek, was friends with their boy, Adam. Suddenly, the Cutters must face the unthinkable: that a murderer isn’t just stalking too close to home...but is inside it already.

Gail Bowen, The Brutal Heart: A Joanne Kilbourn Mystery

Reader’s Digest 2008 has named Gail Bowen “Canada’s Best Mystery Writer” and everyone will know why when they read The Brutal Heart.

With a federal election just weeks away, Joanne Kilbourn is following the campaign of a woman running for leadership and whose success depends less on the election day poll, and more on the outcome of a custody battle. Meanwhile, a local call girl is murdered – a woman whose clientele included Regina’s most prominent professionals…including Joanne’s husband. Joanne seeks to find out why the dead woman threatened clients with blackmail – an investigation that leads to truth and death.

Hardcover
McClelland & Stewart

ISBN: 978-0-7710-1687-5

August 2008

$29.99

Pat Capponi, Last Stop Sunnyside: A Dana Leoni Mystery

Dana Leoni, recovering from posttraumatic stress, is living in a rough rooming house when a beloved housemate among the group of the marginalized and the mad is found dead. Police quickly run out of leads, leaving Dana and the other residents to investigate.

Dana and her rag-tag posse amusingly cope with the hindrances of poverty. They can't synchronize their watches because they only have one watch. They can't tail suspects –they don't drive. They can go by bus, but there's not much money for bus fare. Yet ingenuity and persistence lead the to the villains who are holding vulnerable women in captivity to extract their meagre pensions.

Mass market paperback

HarperCollins Canada

ISBN: 978-155-468-2157

July 2008

$8.99

Pat Capponi, The Corpse Will Keep: A Dana Leoni Mystery

Wealthy businessman Bernie Preston persuades Dana Leoni to investigate why his mother, an elegant dowager known for charity work among the homeless, is handing over wads of cash to low-lifes. It is the perfect case for Dana and her friends who are at home among street people and soup kitchens.

But the assignment turns dangerous. Jesse, a volunteer at the church, kidnaps Dana and holds her hostage with Mrs. Preston. Jesse had targeted the older woman when one of his girlfriends revealed her secret, allowing him to invade her life, her home and her bank account. There is a grisly climax before Dana's housemates come to the rescue.

Mass market paperback

HarperCollins Canada

ISBN: 978-155-468-1006

July 2008

$8.99

Stanley Evans, Seaweed on the Rocks

In this fourth mystery of the Seaweed series, Victoria neighbourhood cop Silas Seaweed has always been sensitive to his Coast Salish culture, but when he is confronted by a ghostly ten-foot-tall grizzly bear on a marsh, he wonders whether this is a creature from the Unknown World or a trickster trying to con him. Silas's attempts to unmask the bear lead him into a labyrinth of blackmail and murder.

“Evans's combination of Salish lore and solid plotting is a winner…” – Globe and Mail

“...written with strong plots...worth reading and lingering over…” – Hamilton Spectator

Trade paperback
TouchWood Editions
ISBN: 978-1-894898-73-7
September 2008
$12.95

Nicola Furlong, Here Ends the Beginning

Here Ends the Beginning introduces John the Apostle, a reclusive and temperamental rock star struggling to balance the pressure of celebrity with the burden of protecting an astounding secret. His charisma and stigmata attract global attention and curiosity, yet he desperately wants to be left alone with his family. But when three unwelcome strangers infiltrate his secluded West Coast compound, all hell breaks loose in this exhilarating and provocative story.

Nicola Furlong introduces the Quillr, a revolutionary online multi-sensory storytelling platform as the publishing conduit for her latest work, Here Ends the Beginning. Using the Quillr's interactive media mashup, the story is punctuated throughout with video clips and photographs of actors recreating the characters and scenes. Music and sound effects further enhance this original reading experience. The unique website, with its soft brown background and cream-coloured font, triumphs over concerns regarding reading online.

The first few multi-sensory chapters of Here Ends the Beginning are offered for free at www.hereendsthebeginning.com, with the full 43-chapter entertainment package available for $12.95.

A.R. Grobbo, One Woman's Poison: A Gloria Trevisi Mystery

A woman is haunted by a dreadful secret, some lethal preserves are killing the locals, and Gloria is about to face the worst two weeks of her life.

"Anne Grobbo is one of the most talented mystery writers I've read in years. Her Gloria Trevisi mysteries are crisply written, tightly plotted and filled with characters who walk right off the page. You will puzzle along with Gloria and find that she is still in your mind long after you've turned the last page." – award-winning author Dee Lloyd

E-book & trade paperback
Double Dragon Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-55404-566-2 (same for e-book & paperback)
August 2008
$5.99 (e-book)
US$19.99 (trade paperback)

Dave Hugelschaffer, One Careless Moment: A Porter Cassel Mystery

When a fire starts deep within a Montana forest valley, Porter Cassel is brought in to take command. The fire moves quickly from bad to worse, killing one of Cassel's men. Removed from command, Cassel takes the fire investigation into his own hands. One Careless Moment picks up where Day into Night left off -- with Porter continuing to prove himself against all odds. Fighting against local legends about the valley being haunted, shady development deals, and the tree-hugging hippies who've chosen Holder's Canyon as their particular Eden, Cassel must get to the bottom of the case, not only to clear his name but also his conscience.

Trade paperback

Cormorant Books

ISBN: 978-1-897151-08-2

July 2008

$21.95

Mary Jane Maffini, The Cluttered Corpse: A Charlotte Adams Mystery

Professional organizer and accidental sleuth Charlotte Adams is working to corral an out-of-control collection of stuffed toys when a local prankster turns up very dead at the bottom of her client's staircase. To Charlotte's horror, her client hysterically confesses to the crime. Soon the wrong person is languishing in the slammer and Charlotte is left with a real mess to sort out. As she mobilizes her organizational skills to solve the crime, she soon discovers that death is not at all soft and cuddly.

"… a sprightly novel with bright dialogue" – The London Free Press

Large print edition
Thorndike
ISBN: 978-1-597228145
September 2008
US$25.95

Bianca Queed,
The Park Bench Diaries: A collection of interconnected short stories

Enter the disquieting world of the Park Bench Diaries where reality and magic blur, and a twist of fate awaits the unwary in an urban Garden of Eden: a series of tales surrounding an elusive park bench in High Park, Toronto, Ontario. These short stories illuminate a secret, a desire, a love and loss, and a life, all interconnected by a single park bench.

Trade paperback
KCLF-21 Press
ISBN: 978-0-9782020-5-7
September 2008
$18.95

Peter Robinson, Aftermath: An Inspector Banks Novel

Two Yorkshire police officers investigating a “domestic” stumble upon the very worst of crimes – the sexual torture and murder of a young teenage girl. Moments later, one of the officers is felled by a machete blow, and his rookie female partner takes out her disgust and fury on the murderer, battering him to death.

This is the intensely dramatic, wrenching beginning to the twelfth in Peter Robinson’s award-winning and internationally bestselling Inspector Banks series.

Mass market paperback (premium)
McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 978-0-7710-7616-9
September 2008
$11.99

Peter Robinson,
All the Colours of Darkness: An Inspector Banks Novel

The Alan Banks series turns 21 with the new gripping and intricately plotted mystery, All the Colours of Darkness.

On the first warm day of the year, some children head to a swimming hole where, in the nearby woods, they find a man hanging from a branch by a rope around his neck. Banks is in London with his new girlfriend, so the case falls to Annie Cabbot. Why would a successful set and costume designer with a well-reviewed production of Othello playing be in such despair that he would take his own life?

Hardcover
McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 978-0-7710-7611-4
September 2008
$29.99

Peter Robinson, Friend of the Devil: An Inspector Banks Mystery

On a cliff edge overlooking the North Sea, a quadriplegic woman in a wheelchair stares unseeingly at the waves. She had been murdered. Miles away in a storeroom in the Maze, a medieval warren of yards and alleys at the heart of Eastvale, Yorkshire, a young woman lies sprawled on a heap of leather scraps. She, too, has been murdered. Their bodies are discovered around the same time that DI Annie Cabbot wakes with a severe hangover in the bed of a young man she barely recognizes.

From these three strands, Peter Robinson weaves a complex and compelling story.

Peter Robinson,
The Summer That Never Was: An Inspector Banks Novel
While recuperating from the events of Aftermath on a Greek island, Banks reads that the bones of his childhood friend have been dug up in a field not far away from the road where he disappeared more than 35 years earlier. Intrigued by the discovery and still consumed with guilt because of a related incident he failed to report at the time, Banks returns to his hometown and becomes peripherally involved in the investigation. At the same time, the case of another missing teenager – the son of a famous model and stepson of an ex-footballer, is handed to DI Annie Cabbot.

Garry Ryan, A Hummingbird Dance: A Detective Lane Mystery

A Hummingbird Dance begins with a disappearance connected to an unsolved murder. When Detectives Lane and Harper investigate the death of a 16-year-old First Nations man, they begin to unravel a series of killings. They must also deal with complex family issues while risking their lives to uncover the truth behind the killings.

Mass market paperback

NeWest Press

ISBN: 978-1-897126-31-8
September 2008
$11.95

Robert Scott, Lost Youth: An Avalon Mystery

The daughter of a prominent Vancouver businessman has been kidnapped. A ransom has been demanded. Failure to comply could mean the death of an innocent soul. The problem is that the kidnapper has made a terrible mistake that even he is not aware of.

Jack Elton is back again to unravel the mystery of the missing youth and the late night caller. With police officer Val Cummins, he tries to track down the kidnapper. It is a game of beat the clock as Jack works with the police to reunite father and daughter and to bring her abductor to justice.

Hardcover
Avalon Books
ISBN: 978-0-8034-9908-9
August 2008
$24.47

Older 2008 releases by new CWC members

And now some books published earlier in 2008 by authors
who have just joined the CWC.

Sean Chercover, Big City Bad Blood

A modern PI thriller set in Chicago, Big City Bad Blood won the Gumshoe and Crimespree Magazine awards for Best First Novel, was nominated for the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel, and is nominated for the upcoming Barry, Anthony, and ITW Thriller awards.

“Excellent” – Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail

“Thrilling” – Detroit Free Press

“A multilayered tapestry Chicago comes alive in this book” – Chicago Sun Times

The film and television rights to Big City Bad Blood have been acquired by Fox Studios, and the next book in the series, Trigger City, comes out in hardcover from William Morrow in October.

Mass market paperback
Harper Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-061128684
March 2008
$8.99

A Black Tie Affair and Other Mystery Stories is the second book in a series of light-hearted mysteries featuring the Beary family. Opera singer Philippa Beary, along with her feisty city-councillor father and her detective-inspector brother, faces operatic crises, political controversies, catastrophes at the skating rink, and disasters at the Christmas pantomime. These nine intriguing stories will challenge mystery lovers everywhere.

“Classic murder mystery plots reminiscent of Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen.” – Kirkus Discoveries

“The writing is assured and lively, and the logic is credible.” – Barbara Kay, National Post

George Meech, The Mating of Mata

Mata is a sweet blonde girl-next-door type with a not-so-ordinary career: She’s an exotic dancer with a drop-‘em-dead striptease act. Her unwavering loyalty to her woman friends is matched only by her weakness for the wrong sort of man on the wrong side of the law. But softhearted though she is, Mata will only take so much. When any man goes too far and abuses her or one of her friends, she drops him dead…literally. Her ingenuity always keeps her one step ahead of the police, and in the final twist, she unites with her real love at last.

Hardcover
iUniverse
ISBN: 978-0-595-71532-9
February 2008
US$26.95

Trade paperback
iUniverse
ISBN: 978-0-595-47969-6
February 2008
US$16.95

Michael Rose, The Tsunami File: A Frank Delaney Thriller

Frank Delaney, investigative journalist and sometime spy, is on assignment in Phuket, Thailand, in the aftermath of the tsunami that killed thousands of people, foreigners and locals alike.

Disaster victim identification teams from police forces across the globe have descended on this idyllic holiday location to carry out their gruesome work. Delaney discovers that, against all logic, someone is trying to prevent identification of one of the bodies lying in makeshift beachside morgues. His search for the reason follows a trail through Thailand’s seedy child sex trade to an elaborate cover-up in Germany and France, where those with everything to lose use increasingly desperate measures to stop him dead.

Trade paperback
McArthur & Company
ISBN: 978-1-55278-717-5
June 2008
$24.95

Gwen Southin, Death in a Family Way: A Margaret Spencer Mystery

This is the first in the Margaret Spencer mystery series. Margaret Spencer, who at 50 years of age abandons home and hearth for a Girl Friday job in Nat Southby's detective agency. Before she's been on the job a week, she discovers a dead man and then acquires his cat, Emily. After that, there's no turning back, and as her boss takes on the case of a missing teenaged girl, Margaret herself falls into the clutches of a murderer and becomes involved in a wild boat chase on the high seas.

Trade paperback
TouchWood Editions
ISBN: 978-1-894898-72-0
March 2008
$12.95

Gwen Southin, Death on a Short Leash: A Margaret Spencer Mystery

Trade paperback
TouchWood Editions
ISBN: 978-1-894898-70-6
March 2008
$12.95

Gwen Southin, In the Shadow of Death: A Margaret Spencer Mystery

The second book in the series finds Margaret Spencer, now separated from her husband, Harry, living alone in Kitsilano and happy in her job as assistant to detective Nat Southby. Maggie, fed up with her husband harassing her to return to her upper middle-class life, decides to head north for a week on a dude ranch. As she travels to Williams Lake, through Squamish, Whistler, and Lillooet, Maggie ventures ever deeper into a new mystery. Peopled with intriguing characters and a healthy dose of betrayal, arrogance, violence, and suspense, this story is set against the bucolic but ultimately frightening splendour of the Cariboo district.

Trade paperback
TouchWood Editions
ISBN: 978-1-894898-71-3
March 2008
$12.95

Richard Todd, Raincloud

In this provocative mystery thriller, racial tension between a white community and a nearby Aboriginal village results in a series of violent murders that could upset the balance of power.

“Inventive, real, gritty with a host of visceral characters shaped and woven with a fresh eye.” – Maninder Chana, author of Gunga Din Lite & Other Delights (of Lust & Comedy)

Trade paperback
i Universe
ISBN: 978-0-595464586
May 2008
US$18.95

If you missed any back issues of Cool Canadian Crime, you can find them at:
Cool Canadian Crime, October to December 2005
Cool Canadian Crime, January to March 2006
Cool Canadian Crime, April to June 2006
Cool Canadian Crime, July to September 2006
Cool Canadian Crime, October to December 2006
Cool Canadian Crime, January to March 2007
Cool Canadian Crime, April to June 2007
Cool Canadian Crime, July to September 2007
Cool Canadian Crime, October to December 2007
Cool Canadian Crime, January to March 2008
Cool Canadian Crime, April to June 2008

The books listed in Cool Canadian Crime can usually be found at – or ordered online from – our Crime Writers of Canada member bookstores:

· As the Plot Thickens (Kingston, ON)
www.astheplotthickens.com
Phone: (613) 548-4664
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

· Prime Crime Books (Ottawa, ON)
www.primecrimebooks.com
Phone: (613) 238-CLUE
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

· Sleuth of Baker Street (Toronto, ON)
www.sleuthofbakerstreet.com
Phone: (416) 483-3111
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it