Vancouver is in an uproar over the death by gunshot of a Scottish nanny, Janet Stewart. An almost deliberately ham-handed police investigation has Constable Hook suspecting a cover-up. The powerful United Council of Scottish Societies is demanding an inquiry. The killing has become a political issue with an election not far away.The city is buzzing with rumours. Miss Stewart's fellow nannies have accused the Chinese houseboy of murder, capitalizing on a wave of anti-Chinese propaga...

An exhilarating page-turner set in 1920s Vancouver post prohibition, when liquor was the fuel driving big business, big government—and major crime. In this spellbinding follow-up to his mystery The White Angel, John MacLachlan Gray captures the spirit of Vancouver in those gritty, gin-soaked days, as the city was remaking itself between wars.Alcohol is once again legal in Vancouver after the failed experiment of prohibition, but pro-temperance sentiments r...

On a rust-bucket cargo ship bound from Liverpool to the United States in 1848, an Irish stowaway named Devlin steals a suspicious package after witnessing it changing hands between two sea captains. All he finds is a seemingly worthless pile of papers marked "David Copperfield, Final Four Numbers, by Charles Dickens." Devlin is determined to see if he can somehow turn events to his advantage by paying a call on Dickens's American publisher.A year later, a newly admitted patient to a...

The open-and-shut case of the Fatal Flapper just won’t stay closed in this thrilling and immersive novel of 1920s Vancouver—another Raincoast Noir mystery.Miss Dora Decker doesn’t look like the sort of young woman capable of stabbing her stockbroker employer twenty-five times with her high-heeled shoe; yet, thanks to a slow news day, she has become internationally famous as the Fatal Flapper, and the police are only too happy to make the arrest.Meanwhile, E...

One of Canada’s most successful and enduring musical plays, Billy Bishop Goes to War was first published in 1982 and went on to win the Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Award and the Governor General’s Award for Drama. In 2010, the celebrated story of the World War One flying ace – credited with seventy-two victories and billed as the top pilot in the British Empire – was revised to frame the original play as a retrospective. It is the same play it always was – the difference is in the ...

Lost in North America is a caustic, humourous exploration of a Canada we don’t often talk about-a collective mental creation of great charm and complexity, hovering precariously somewhere in Video North America, in disguise as the most successful colony in the history of the world. Lost in North America is a personal, idiosyncratic tour of the collective work of art called Canada at the close of the 20th century, conducted by a guide who is himself deeply puzzled about hi...