The Criminal Streak

By Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

After two pieces of an asteroid hit their planet and knocked it off its axis, the surviving beings of the planet spent centuries rebuilding their society on the edge of disaster. The Leaders made Great Changes and Purges, constructing twenty huge cities, called megalopolises, to house their population, cultivating huge farms, and purging most of the technology so everyone had a job. The one problem the Leaders can’t control is crime. They have banished first time criminals to the destroyed former cities, now called Fringes, beside the Megalopolises. The murderers and drug and tobacco sellers are being sent to Orbital Prisons. These are set inside former spaceships orbiting above the planet. But those prisons are being overwhelmed and there is now a quest to find another planet that would support their type of species. Jawn has just been sent to the Fringe of Megalopolises One for theft. He is lost, scared, and easily robbed of his few belongings. He finds his brother and is given a quick lesson on the rules of living in the Fringe. Gwin is an Exploratory Officer who is part of the mission that finds the planet suitable to be used for a penal colony. Both Gwin and Jawn are among the prisoners on the space ships when they land on that planet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books We Love Ltd.
• Release date: Jul 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781771456005

Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

I began my writing career with a short story, progressed to travel and historical articles, and then on to travel books. I called these books my Backroads series and in the seven of them I described what there is to see and do along the back roads of British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon, and Alaska. I have now switched to fiction writing and am proud to be one of Books We Love Ltd published authors. Through BWL, I have had three mystery novels, Illegally Dead, The Only Shadow In The House, and Whistler's Murder published in a boxed set in what I call the Travelling Detective Series. In my fourth novel, Gold Fever I combine mystery with a little romance.I was born in New Westminster, B.C. and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. I married soon after graduation and moved to a farm where I had two children. Over the years I worked as a bartender, hotel maid, cashier, bank teller, bookkeeper, printing press operator, meat wrapper, gold prospector, warehouse shipper, house renovator and nursing attendant. During that time I raised my two children and helped raise my three step-children.I love change so I have moved over thirty times in my life, living on acreages and farms and in small towns and cities throughout Alberta and B.C. I now live on an acreage in the Port Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island with my husband, four female cats, and one stray male cat.I belong to Crime Writers of Canada, Federation of B.C. Writers, the Port Alberni Arts Council and the Port Alberni Portal Players. My short story, A Capital Offense received Ascent Aspirations Magazine's first prize for flash fiction in 2010. I have since turned that story into a stage play and presented it at the Fringe Festival in Port Alberni in 2014.