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Winnipeg Free Press

Reporter's mother suspected of murder

Squabbling, arrogant wellness superstars selling sophisticated 21st-century snake oil bring murder to Port Ellis in Toronto's elite cottage country, gifting former big city ace reporter Cat Conway a lifeline to keep her heroic small-town paper on life support. 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 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 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 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 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 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.