Reporter's mother suspected of murder
There's also an evil mayor cheering on anti-vaxxers who are becoming increasingly violent… but why is his wife so friendly to Cat and her eccentric mother — who, alas, is high on the list of murder suspects?
Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti's Widows and Orphans (House of Anansi Press, 352 pages, $23) is the second in a series telling the hidden truths about small towns, often hilariously, within a darned good whodunit full of whiz-bang characters.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Car-jackings plague Belfast in 1992 as there are hints of a peaceful resolution of the Troubles. But it doesn't sit right with D.I. Sean Duffy that the latest victim supposedly killed by young thugs stealing his car doesn't, well, actually seem to exist.
As Duffy juggles neighbourhood punks, British secret police, crime lords, government's darkest corners and the IRA, he sleuths that maybe someone is targeting IRA assassins in deep cover in Northern Ireland — but if not the British, who would dare?
Adrian McKinty's Hang on St. Christopher (Black Stone, 306 pages, $44) is a violent tale of honest coppers trying to keep a lid on a brutally divided city in a dangerous land of sectarian hatred — a tale superbly told.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
A woman is drugged in the secret Yukon town of Haven's Rock and dragged into the bush in the freezing cold, but somehow survives. A second woman dies an excruciating death only a few hundred yards from safety, while a third woman…
Detective Casey and her husband, Sheriff Eric, have faced many villains while running a hidden town for people escaping danger down south, but never one this evil. And all the while a fierce blizzard rages, and Casey could be going into labour any moment.
Kelley Armstrong's Cold as Hell (Minotaur, 352 pages, $26) is one of the better (though gruesome) entries in the nine Haven's Rock books so far, at least for regulars, but may lack enough backstory for newcomers catching up.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
A widowed innkeeper in rural Denmark gets bludgeoned to death, no suspects, no motive, nothing for ace Copenhagen police detective Louise Ricks — until they find a secret child's bedroom, a child no one (allegedly) knew existed.
Will that be the only corpse as Ricks investigates a village which has hidden great evil, and seemingly boring nice people who each may have more than one scurrilous secret?
In Sara Blaedel's terrific A Mother's Love, translated by Tara Chace (Dutton, 405 pages, $25), we also get Ricks' own shattered romantic life, the awkwardness of being BFFs with a newspaper reporter, and having to head up a new homicide team that slimy senior officers are eager to scuttle.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Clad only in his PJs, an irascible atheist academic, renowned and despised for spotting fake ancient religious artifacts, is found dead on the lawn of a posh hotel in Oxford — drowned after being beaten.
It's a complex case that could cost the careers of the two polar opposite detective inspector Wilkinses — the scholarly, handsome, Black and by-the-book Ray Wilkins and the trailer park, street punk, white and pugnacious Ryan Wilkins — as a new cop shop boss has them atop her list for firing to meet her vision for 21st-century policing.
Simon Mason's A Voice in the Night (Mobius, 362 pages, $26) is an utterly brilliant police whodunit with remarkable twists, slews of nifty subplots awash with even niftier characters and two fascinating coppers that'll have you hoping for a TV series on Britbox or Acorn.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin envies Cat Conway and her modern gadgets; at a small-town paper, he had to type on a typewriter (ask your grandparents) and develop rolls of film in a darkroom.
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Winnipeg Free Press
10 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Movie Review: In ‘Heads of State,' a buddy comedy with statesmen
Say what you will about the Idris Elba-John Cena vehicle 'Heads of State,' but it's surely the first buddy comedy about the fraying bonds of NATO. The potential collapse of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization plays a surprisingly pivotal role in this fitfully diverting, for-background-noise-only, straight-to-streaming movie. Elba plays the embattled British Prime Minister Sam Clarke, while Cena co-stars as the recently elected U.S. President Will Derringer, a former action star. 'Heads of State,' directed by Ilya Naishuller ('Nobody'), is mostly about their relationship, a tense and adversarial one challenged further when an assassination plot leaves them stranded together in Belarus. But that 'Heads of State,' which debuts Wednesday on Prime Video, is such a mild romp makes it all the more surprising to hear a line uttered like: 'If NATO falls, there's backstop against despots and dictators.'not It's a funny time to release a comedy set around international political disconnection and imperiled Western democracy. But if you were beginning to worry that 'Heads of State' is too timely, don't. Any nods to current events here serve more as reminders of how much 'Heads of State' — like most of Hollywood's output — is unengaged with anything resembling our political reality. You could argue that that's not necessarily a bad thing. You could also argue that the greater sin of 'Heads of State' is underusing Stephen Root. (He plays an expert working for the bad guys.) But the vaguest hints of real-world intrigue only cast a pale light on the movie's mostly lackluster comic chops and uninspired action sequences. The best thing going for 'Heads of State' is that the chemistry between Elba and Cena is solid. The 'Suicide Squad' co-stars trade barbs with a genial ease. Most of the time, those revolve around their characters' divergent histories — Clarke was a commando before becoming a politician — in debates like which one of them is 'gym strong' as opposed to 'strong strong.' That's one of the few decent gags in the script by Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec and Harrison Query. But one problem in 'Heads of State' goes beyond the high-concept set-up. The best buddy comedies — 'Midnight Run,' '48 Hrs.,' 'The Nice Guys' — are predicated on opposites thrown together. Elba and Cena have their obvious differences. (Cena's Derringer is exaggeratedly optimistic here, too.) But ultimately they're both beefy dudes in suits. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. As the MI6 agent Noel Bisset, Priyanka Chopra Jones gives the movie a kick. But her scenes are left to the beginning and end of the movie. In between, we're left to wonder where she went, how two political leaders would have such non-existent security and whether a few half-decent jokes are enough to forgive the movie's geopolitical delusions. 'Heads of State,' an Amazon MGM Studios release is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for sequences of strong violence/action, language and some smoking. Running time: 113 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
Winnipeg Free Press
16 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Judge tells 92-year-old he will die in prison after conviction in UK's oldest solved cold case
LONDON (AP) — For more than a half-century, Ryland Headley got away with murder. When justice finally caught up to the former railway worker Tuesday in a British courtroom, he was 92 years old and using hearing aids to listen to his fate. A judge sentenced Headley to life in prison for the rape and murder of Louisa Dunne, a 75-year-old widow and grandmother who was strangled in her home in western England in 1967. It is believed to be the longest time in the U.K. between crime and conviction. 'The violation of her home, her body and, ultimately, her life was a pitiless and cruel act by a depraved man,' Justice Derek Sweeting said in Bristol Crown Court. Headley broke into Dunne's home through a window and left a palm print on the glass. Police took the hand prints of 19,000 men and boys in the area to try to solve the crime, but did not find a match at the time. Headley moved out of the area and went on to rape two older women in similar circumstances in the late 1970s and serve time in prison. But his DNA was not collected until an unrelated arrest in 2012. Last year, semen found on the blue skirt that Dunne had been wearing when she was killed was found to match Headley's DNA. His palm print was found to match the one on her window. At his trial, prosecutors had read testimony from the victims of his previous rape convictions, providing jurors with an insight into what happened when he broke into Dunne's home, said Det. Insp. Dave Marchant. 'Hearing the voices of the victims of his 1977 offenses, is just incredibly powerful and harrowing,' Marchant said. Dunne's granddaughter, Mary Dainton, who is now about the age her grandmother was when she was killed, said she had been stunned to learn of Headley's arrest in November. 'I accepted that some murders just never get solved and some people have to live with that emptiness and sadness,' she said. On Tuesday, Dainton told the court that her grandmother's murder and rape had cast a cloud over the rest of her mother's life. 'The fact the offender wasn't caught caused my mother to become and remain very ill,' she said. 'It saddens me deeply that all the people who knew and loved Louisa are not here to see that justice is being done.' Sweeting said that by escaping punishment for so long, Headley had compounded the suffering of Dunne's family. He told Headley he had to serve a minimum of 20 years in prison and would normally spend time explaining the effect of such a term. But he was blunt in this case. 'You'll never be released and you will die in prison,' Sweeting said.
Toronto Star
16 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Judge tells 92-year-old he will die in prison after conviction in UK's oldest solved cold case
LONDON (AP) — For more than a half-century, Ryland Headley got away with murder. When justice finally caught up to the former railway worker Tuesday in a British courtroom, he was 92 years old and using hearing aids to listen to his fate. A judge sentenced Headley to life in prison for the rape and murder of Louisa Dunne, a 75-year-old widow and grandmother who was strangled in her home in western England in 1967. It is believed to be the longest time in the U.K. between crime and conviction.
