May Author of the Month: Philip Kerr

England's Philip Kerr enjoyed a stellar literary debut. March Violets, the first of his Bernie Gunther novels, appeared in 1989 to wide critical appreciation. By the time the third novel in the series was published two years later, Kerr's reputation was established. Not wanting to be typecast, he turned to writing standalone thrillers and children's books that disappointed some of his readers. But even Kerr could not deny Bernie Gunther, and he returned with his dogged German sleuth in The One From the Other in 2006.

In Kerr's new book, A Man Without Breath, Bernie has a new job at the German War Crimes Bureau in Berlin. The year is 1943. A month has passed since the stunning defeat at Stalingrad, but unsettling reports are circulating of a mass grave in a forest near Smolensk. Polish officers killed by the Russians? This would give the Nazi regime an unexpected propaganda victory over the Russians. Bernie is dispatched to gather evidence. Once there, however, he discovers a cunning killer is hiding behind the carnage, someone Bernie must put a face to before the killer puts an end to Bernie.

Canadian Mystery Writers Buck the Sophomore Jinx

Peggy Blair
So much of what has happened around Blair's first novel, The Beggar's Opera, involved sheer luck. And timing. And perhaps a little persistence. After her manuscript was turned down repeatedly by agents, she entered it in several international competitions. The least likely was also the most prestigious: the Debut Dagger Award of the UK Crime Writers Association. To her surprise and delight she made the shortlist. Three weeks after a chance meeting with Ian Rankin at the awards ceremony, The Beggar's Opera was a hot title at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Germany made an offer, followed by Holland, then Norway. And then Penguin Canada purchased the world English language rights and offered a two-book deal. The Beggar's Opera, featuring Inspector Ramirez, head of the Havana Major Crimes Unit and a man haunted by the victims of his unsolved cases, came out last February to rave reviews and steadily climbed up the bestseller lists.

In the gripping sequel, The Poisoned Pawn, Ramirez is in Ottawa to take custody of a suspected pedophile. The routine assignment turns deadly when women suddenly start dying in Havana. Stranded in Canada's capital, he focuses on untangling a web of deceit and depravity that extends all the way from the corridors of power in Ottawa to the Vatican.

G.B. Joyce
Fans of Joyce's first Brad Shade mystery The Code can look forward to the return of the savvy hockey scout turned private eye in The Black Ace, due out in early March. Brad Shade has been just about everywhere hockey is played. He has ridden the buses in the minors, shared dressing rooms with the legends of the game, closed bars with guys destined for the Hall of Fame, and dropped the gloves with journeymen who, like himself, will never get near it. And even though he's retired after fourteen years of bouncing around the league, he's still living out of a suitcase and still taking numbers. Thanks to Shade's work at the NHL draft last season, he gets to hold on to his job as scout for L.A. - at least for now, and Shade is checking out the talent in Regina with his old friend and teammate "Chief". But when they learn of the suicide of a teammate from their playing days in L.A., they discover there's a dark side of Regina, where people have secrets they intend to keep at any cost.

G.B. Joyce is the author of six books of sports non-fiction, most recently The Devil and Bobby Hull. He has worked for ESPN since 2003 and before that was a sports columnist at The Globe and Mail.

Cover Revealed for Robert J. Sawyer's Red Planet Blues

 

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Red Planet Blues

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I couldn't be more excited to read Robert J. Sawyer's twenty second novel, Red Planet Blues. A hard boiled P.I. tale set on Mars? This book's March release can't come too soon!

Here's a little more about Red Planet Blues: Alex Lomax is the one and only private eye working the mean streets of New Klondike, the Martian frontier town that sprang up forty years ago after Simon Weingarten and Denny O'Reilly discovered fossils on the Red Planet. Back on Earth, where anything can be synthesized, the remains of alien life are the most valuable of all collectibles, so shiploads of desperate treasure hunters stampeded to Mars in the Great Martian Fossil Rush.

Trying to make an honest buck in a dishonest world, Lomax tracks down killers and kidnappers among the failed prospectors, corrupt cops, and a growing population of transfers--lucky stiffs who, after striking paleontological gold, upload their minds into immortal android bodies. But when he uncovers clues to solving the decades-old murders of Weingarten and O'Reilly, along with a journal that may lead to their legendary mother lode of Martian fossils, God only knows what he'll dig up...

Book of the Day: Food for the Gods by Karen Dudley

 

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Food For the Gods

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Karen Dudley recently launched Food for the Gods to an enthusiastic and packed house in Prairie Ink. I've long been a big fan of Karen's Robyn Devara mystery novels, and have been eagerly awaiting her debut foray into fantasy since I first heard of her unique take on ancient Greece. Gordon Ramsay meets Clash of the Titans? How could I not?

Here's a taste of Food for the Gods: Once a prince of Lydia, Pelops was chopped into stewing meat and served to the gods for tea by his not-so-loving father. Remade by the gods and blessed at the same time with a gift for the culinary arts, Pelops flees his painful memories for the bright lamps of Athens where he hopes to make a new life for himself as a celebrity chef. But then a ruthless patron takes an unhealthy interest in his career, a famous courtesan is murdered at a dinner he prepares, and a couple of the less responsible gods offer to help him make a name for himself in Athens. And Pelops begins to realize that when the gods decide they owe you a favour, you?d better start saying your prayers.