Mystery Books from BC

A former undetected outlaw who ran with Bill Bagley’s notorious gang during the Depression, Lena Stillman is now an elite codebreaker in a position to know the nation’s strategic secrets. Good under pressure, good at keeping her mouth shut, Lena never had trouble keeping her double lives compartmentalized—at least not until Bill is sentenced to hang, and her old Clockwork Gang becomes newsworthy.

Despite mounting fear that her secrets might be revealed, Lena excels at work and her skills at …

"...one of those rare books--a satisfying mystery that has no criminal content whatsoever ... even the most hidebound mystery reader is likely to be delighted by this well-written and intriguing tale."

--The Toronto Star

"...a worthy successor to her short fiction collection ... Woodward interweaves several intriguing narrative threads into this intense first-person tale of [Mercy's] actual and mental journeys to discover family, past and present, that will give her life wholeness...enhancing th …

RCMP Sergeant Ray Robertson is in the Turks and Caicos Islands, enjoying two weeks of leave from his job training police in Haiti with the UN. On an early-morning jog along famed Grace Bay Beach he discovers a dead man in the surf. Ray is shocked to recognize the body as that of one of his Haitian police recruits. To his wife's increasing dismay, Ray is compelled to follow the dead man's trail and finds himself plunged into the world of human trafficking and the problems of a tiny country strugg …

As the eve of the great Wizards' Summit approaches, wizards from all over Rockfall Mountain descend on the school at Shadow Tower to refine their craft. When professors start disappearing, it's up to magic-fearing monster sleuths Tank and Fizz to solve this spell-packed mystery and find the missing mages. Aleetha, their detective partner and a wizard-in-training, has dragged Tank and Fizz into the heart of the Shadow Tower, where libraries fly, spells fill the air, and an ancient army of darknes …

As Gina gets ready for her Christmas wedding, all is quiet in Steeltown. Then she's robbed, cousin Jimmy has a heart attack, and someone in the city has hijacked a transport truck full of booze. But who? And why? Gina knows bootlegging used to be a family business, but they stopped that in the '30s. Didn’t they?

Gina and Nico work feverishly to keep the latest bungled family matter under wraps, but the police are closing in. And, once again, everything points to the Holy Cannoli Retirement Home …

Brendell Kisêpîsim Meshango is of Métis heritage and a PhD university professor in Prince George, British Columbia. When Brendell resigns from the university and retreats to her isolated cabin to repair her psyche, she is confronted by a masked intruder. His racial comments lead her to believe she is the solitary victim of a hate crime. However, is all as it appears? After two bizarre days inflicting a sadistic captivity, the intruder mysteriously disappears. Taught by her mother to fear …

Finalist, Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction

A Globe 100 Best Book of the Year

Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)

When Carys Cragg was eleven, her father, a respected doctor, was brutally murdered in his own home by an intruder. Twenty years later, and despite the reservations of her family and friends, she decides to contact his murderer in prison, and the two correspond for a period of two years. She learns of his horrific childhood, and the reasons he lied …

Krissy Mathews has returned. Four years ago, the seventeen-year-old vanished. The young detective assigned to her case has hunted her relentlessly. Now she bursts through the door of the hospital, a lifeless child in her arms and a man she calls her husband by her side. The police pry Jasper Ryan from Krissy's grasp and charge him with her kidnapping.

Diagnosed with Stockholm syndrome, she is forced to question what she thought was true love, borne of the twisted abuse she suffered while isolated …