Review: "When the Saints Go Marching In" by Anthony Bidulka

 This is the first in a new series by award-wining author Anthony Bidulka, who made his name in mystery by writing about a gay detective living a big life in a small Canadian city. 

Adam Saint’s first outing has an explosive opening: a Russian plane crashes, killing the Canadian governor-general. The action jumps back to Canada, where a young mother is on the run with her son, running low on cash and hope. Weaving these two stories together is Adam Saint, a field investigator for a mysterious Canadian agency with international tentacles. 

The plane crash investigation flips from routine to deadly in the blink of his jet-lagged eye. From then on Adam stretches all his skills and stamina to stay ahead of pursuit that ranges from the heights of Asian luxury hotels to the bare Saskatchewan prairie. Can he discover who betrayed whom, and why, before time runs out for himself and for the innocents he has staked his life on protecting?

When the Saints Go Marching In is a high-stakes international thriller with down-on-the-farm community spirit.

When the Saints Go Marching In

Anthony Bidulka

Insomniac Press

Review: The Whisper of Legends by Barbara Fradkin

 This ninth book of the series drags Inspector Green far outside his comfort zone. 

When his daughter Hannah hits the whitewater on the breathtakingly beautiful and dangerously isolated Nahanni River, vague parental worries soon solidify into well-founded concern, for Green if not for the wilderness area’s more trekker-hardened RCMP.

 Disturbing facts come to light about the expedition’s leader. A freak storm washes one of the group’s canoes downstream. Mining consortiums war with environmentalists. Soon Green and Sullivan are on their way to the Yukon, hoping to find Hannah before the rising tensions rend her group and leave her stranded in a trackless, perilous wilderness. Desk-bound Green forces himself past physical and psychological weaknesses in an unfamiliar and hostile environment, where grizzlies and wolves are no longer the most dangerous predators.

 

Part family saga, part a thoughtful exploration of the growing conflict between environmental and resource-extraction priorities, “Whisper of Legends” is an adrenaline-fueled adventure, nearly impossible to put down.

The Whisper of Legends

Barbara Fradkin

Dundurn 2013