Starting from the West Coast, there's The Lost Ones by Sheena Kamal that follows Nora, a traumatized transient & former foster child, as she searches for her missing daughter from the drenched gray streets of Vancouver to the icy white mountains of the BC interior. Or explore Vancouver’s fabulously beautiful North Shore in R.M.Greenaway’s ‘River of Lies’ (Dundurn Press) along with three jaded RCMP officers as they investigate a baffling murder and a missing toddler.
If your taste runs to hard-boiled investigations on the gritty streets, tour the worst parts of Vancouver, BC with A.J. Devlin. Former pro wrestler "Hammerhead" Jed Ounstead encounters tent cities, wrestlers, roller derby, and plenty of human detritus on both sides of the law. ‘Rolling Thunder’ (Newest Press) is the series’ 2nd outing. Another wise-cracking Vancouver PI is 29-year old Dave Wakeland. In “Invisible Dead" by Sam Wiebe, Dave’s dogging the cold trail of his hot ex... straight toward a showdown with a cabal of Vancouver’s most deadly and powerful.
Far from the crowded streets of the Lower Mainland, Interior towns may look idyllic, especially under a blanket of pristine Christmas snow. But don't let the purity of all that white deceive you: every town has a dark interior life, and none more than in Roz Nay’s ‘Hurry Home’ (Simon & Schuster). Child protection officer Alexandra Van Ness is loving her life until her troublemaking sister breezes back into town. Their shared past threatens to spill over into the present, tangling Alexandra in long-buried terrors just when she most needs her calm professionalism to save a child from imminent peril.
Another small town with a dark underbelly is historic Nelson, BC in the Kootenay Mountains, setting for Lucky Jack Road (Mosaic Press) by J.G. Toews. When Jack Ballard, an elite mountain biker with a mile-wide mean streak, is found at the bottom of a ravine with his mangled bike nearby, intrepid reporter Stella Musconi teams up with RCMP Sergeant Ben McKean to determine whether it was unlucky chance that ended his winning forever, or willful murder by someone even meaner than Jack.
Cranbrook author DaveButler’s ‘Full Curl’ (Dundurn Press) features Jenny Willson, a caustic warden from Banff National Park who considers poachers and bureaucrats equally repulsive. If animal protection and environmental conservation are on your Christmas list, you can’t go wrong with this anti-poaching procedural by an author who worked the front lines against poachers in Canada’s best-known National Parks. On the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains there's J.E. Barnard’s Why the Rock Falls (Dundurn), in which a burnt-out RCMP officer and a disabled art historian team up to tackle the wilderness disappearance of a Calgary oil baron and the inexplicable drowning of a fading Hollywood starlet.
For a love song to the prairies’ people, places, and history, visit ‘The Ancient Dead’ (Dundurn) by Barbara Fradkin. Set partly amid the Drumheller hoodoos, the mystery starts with a dinosaur bone hunt and delves into the dusty secrets of a prairie farming community that, over the decades, have seeped deep into Calgary’s oil-company office towers. North of almost everywhere in Alberta (but still only mid-province) we come to The RedChesterfield, a genre-bending novel by Edmonton’s Wayne Arthurson. All I’ll say is that spotting a red chesterfield in a ditch changes a bylaw officer’s life in far more ways than you (or he) expect.
Eastward one more time, to Regina, Saskatchewan and Bone Black, a horror-glazed novel about a Cree woman’s search for her missing sister, the dark paths she is pulled along, and the devastating toll paid by all Indigenous families in the ongoing loss and murder of their women and girls. Author CarolRose GoldenEagle is Cree Dene with roots in Sandy Bay, Saskatchewan.
To finish us off with a lighter note, visit any of the Russel Quant novels by multi-Lambda nominee/winner and longtime Saskatoon resident Anthony Bidulka. Whether globe-trotting or home on the snow-swept range, Russel solves crimes, wines/dines, and finds romance, backed up by a cast of delightful secondary characters I came to love as much as my own family.
Enjoy!
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