Cut to the Chase

by Joan Boswell

This Thing of Darkness: An Inspector Green Mystery

by Barbara Fradkin

A violent end to a controversial life

In the seventh book in the acclaimed Inspector Green series, an old man is found beaten to death on a street corner in Ottawa's Byward Market. Initially, the killing appears to be a mugging gone wrong. However, the mystery deepens when the victim is identified as Dr. Samuel Rosenthal, a retired psychiatrist with a contentious approach to life and treatment.

Green discovers that the doctor recently changed his will to disinherit his estranged son and to benefit several former patients whom he believed he had failed. But who is the young mystery woman seen visiting Rosenthal's home every Saturday night? And more importantly, what does she know about the doctor’s death?

Green races to track down the young visitor, but he is unprepared for the final resolution, which leaves him grappling with the ultimate meaning of justice.

ISBN 978-1-894917-85-8, $16.95 CDN, $16.95 U.S., 288 pages, 5 1/8” x 7 1/2”, trade paper

Arctic Blue Death: A Meg Harris Mystery

by R.J. Harlick

The sparsely populated Arctic is no stranger to murder

The fourth in the Meg Harris series by Ottawa's R.J. Harlick, Arctic Blue Death follows Meg's adventures into the Candian Arctic as she searches for the truth about the disappearance of her father when she was a child.

Many years ago, her father's plane had gone missing in the Arctic and he was never seen again. What happened on that fateful flight? Thirty-six years later, her mother receives some strange Inuit drawings that suggest he might have survived. Intent on discovering the answers, no matter how painful, Meg travels to Iqaluit to find the artist and is sucked into the world of Inuit art forgery.

Arctic Blue Death is not only a journey into Meg's past and the events that helped shape the person she is today, but it's also a journey into the land of the Inuit and the culture that has sustained them for thousands of years.

ISBN 978-1-894917-87-2, $16.95 CDN, $16.95 U.S., 304 pages, 5 1/8” x 7 1/2”, trade paper

Law and Disorder: A Camilla MacPhee Mystery

by Mary Jane Maffini

More murderous mayhem in Canada's capital

One of Canada's best-loved sleuths returns in her sixth hair-raising adventure. Victims' advocate Camilla MacPhee is following the trial of Lloyd Brugel, a ruthless criminal kingpin charged with a fatal firebombing. She’s looking forward to seeing him convicted, but when his sleazy counsel is found dead, it conveniently delays the proceedings. The lawyer, no saint himself, was drowned and shot. In case that message was too subtle, an old joke featuring dead lawyers shows up.

Camilla soon learns the victim was not the only member of the Ottawa legal profession whose death was heralded by a tasteless attempt at humour. Is Brugel reaching from behind the bars of the regional detention centre to manipulate his trial and to exact revenge?

Camilla does her stubborn best to head off the killer, hampered by her annoying assistant, the police, her bossy sisters and the arrival of her possible stepdaughters-to-be for the Dragon Boat Races.

ISBN 978-1-894917-86-5, $16.95 CDN, $16.95 U.S., 312 pages, 5 1/8” x 7 1/2”, trade paper