B.C. Blues Crime Series

2017 Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award Finalist It’s too cold to go missing in northern B.C., as a mismatched team of investigators battle the clock while the disappearances add up. A popular rockabilly singer has vanished in the snowbound Hazeltons of northern B.C. Lead RCMP investigator David Leith and his team work through the possibilities: has she been snatched by the so-called Pickup Killer, or does the answer lie here in the community, somewhere among her reticent fans and friends? Leith has much to contend with: rough terrain and punishing weather, motel-living and wily witnesses. The local police force is tiny but headstrong, and one young constable seems more hindrance than help — until he wanders straight into the heart of the matter. The urgency ramps up as one missing woman becomes two, the second barely a ghost passing through. Suspects multiply, but only at the bitter end does Leith discover who is the coldest girl of all.

A heartbreaking set of murders bring detectives Leith and Dion together in the Lower Mainland, where violence flows like a riptide. Last summer the inlet waters washed an unnamed woman’s body onto the rocks of North Vancouver’s Neptune shipyards. When RCMP Constable Cal Dion returns home after a year’s absence, he finds the case still open and grown cold. While Dion works to fit back in and put closure to the Jane Doe drowning case, newly relocated Constable Dave Leith is learning to cope with his first big-city posting. But they have bigger concerns: Why would anyone beat up a young electrician, then track down his wife and baby girl to finish them off? It is a motiveless and haunting killing that leaves behind one small witness and a handful of cryptic clues. And who battered and asphyxiated a wealthy nightclub owner in his own garage? A case of home invasion, by the looks of it. But Leith has a less abstract set of suspects to deal with: the victim’s business partner and his strange little clan. The North Vancouver General Investigations Section is put to the test, with two files to solve, one tragic cold case, and Dion seemingly lost at sea.

Leith and Dion are on the hunt for a different kind of murderer … and he’s a real animal. It seems the October rains have brought death and disaster to North Vancouver. A missing hiker is found by his son and daughter, a foul smell leads to a mauled body in a crawl space, and a small boy is attacked by a man in wolf form. Once an up-and-coming Serious Crimes investigator, these days Constable Cal Dion is back on general duties, feeling out-of-the-loop and rebellious. On a routine canvassing task, he finds himself questioning an attractive witness, one he feels is peripheral enough to the crawl space case that he would be safe in asking her out. Of course, it’s the worst decision.… Constable David Leith is in the thick of the same investigation, a case complicated by rumours running wild and a most elusive suspect. Halloween has brought out the ghouls for Leith and his team … and possibly a shapeshifter as well, with murder on its mind.

A string of incidents causes Cal Dion to learn some harsh truths about himself. A single-vehicle crash on the Sea to Sky Highway is blamed on the notorious stretch of road — but when bad things start happening to the good people who stopped to help the victim, North Vancouver RCMP Constable Dave Leith starts to wonder if something darker is at play. Leith and his partner, JD, work through clues that are as close to bizarre as they’ve ever seen. At the same time, Leith is keeping tabs on a murder suspect who is too close for comfort: Cal Dion, a cop and colleague, knows all about crime — and perhaps how to get away with it. Dion is looking at a long fall from grace, but his mind is on the Sea to Sky killings, and he’s beginning to think the team is on the wrong track. Could it be that a crime from his turbulent past holds the key?

In rain-drenched Vancouver, detectives Dion and Leith work to separate truth from lies in two seemingly unrelated cases. February is the month of romance, but in North Vancouver it’s also become the month of murder. While the North Shore RCMP slog through the rain in the search for whoever left a young woman to die in the Riverside Secondary School parking lot — their first clue a Valentine’s Day card — a toddler mysteriously vanishes from a Riverside Drive home in the midst of a dinner party. With Constable JD Temple's full attention on the parking lot murder, Constables Dave Leith and Cal Dion work the kidnap … until a tenuous connection is made between the two cases, along with the thinnest ray of hope that the child could be alive and well in the hands of a childless couple. But when more tragedy rains down on the North Shore, lies must be unveiled before the ugly truth can emerge.

A dangerous undercover assignment nearly puts Dion in his grave. North Vancouver RCMP officers Leith and Dion have a gruesome new mystery lying at their feet. Up in the breezy heights of Paradise Road, a craftsman has been spiked to his lawn by his own artwork. Was it an aesthetics-fuelled feud with the neighbours? An enemy from the past? Or the most challenging of crimes to solve: a random attack? Drawn into an offside mystery of his own, Dion befriends a young magician, who then seems to make herself disappear. But with the team closing in on the Paradise Road killer, he must put aside his personal dilemmas to take on the lead role in setting a trap for their volatile suspect. It’s a foolproof setup, but even the best laid plans can go awry, and this one leads him straight into a fight for his life.