Hooked on Murder: Bradley and Benison

Two Canadian crime writers with Prairie roots mine the gold of unsettling events that take place amid the supposedly placid environs of the traditional English village...

The English village of Bishop's Lacey is never short of two things: mysteries to solve and pre-adolescent detectives to solve them. The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches is the latest novel this bestselling series of cozy mysteries by one-time Saskatoon resident, Alan Bradley. Once again the young chemist and aspiring detective, Flavia de Luce, is on the case. This time Flavia brings her knowledge of poisons and her indefatigable spirit to solve one of the most dastardly crimes the English countryside has to offer, and in the process she comes closer than ever to solving her life's greatest mystery: her mother's disappearance.

Writing in the great whodunit tradition of British mysteries, Winnipeg's C.C. Benison takes us to new heights in Ten Lords A-Leaping, the third novel in his Father Christmas series. To fundraise for the parish in bucolic Thornford Regis, Father Tom Christmas skydives for charity. While his landing is bumpy, it's nothing compared to that of Hector, Earl of Fairhaven, who leaps from twenty thousand feet with disastrous results. Some residents of the town believe that those results were not accidental, and soon Tom Christmas is investigating a crime that puts him on course for a very hard landing of his own.

This article was taken from the January/February edition of our news magazine, The Bookseller. Pick up your own free copy of the magazine inside of our stores.