J.E. Barnard - Böcker

2016 Unhanged Arthur Award for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel — WinnerWhen a phantom stalker targets her friend, Lacey McCrae’s crime-busting skills are tested to their limits.With her career in tatters and her marriage receding in the rear-view mirror, ex-RCMP corporal Lacey McCrae trades her uniform for a tool belt, and the Lower Mainland for the foothills west of Calgary. Amid the oil barons, hockey stars, and other high rollers who inhabit the wilderness playground is her old university roommate, Dee Phillips. Dee’s glossy life was shaken by a reckless driver; now she’s haunted by a nighttime prowler only she can hear. As snowmelt swells the icy river, threatening the only bridge back to civilization, Lacey must make the call: assume Dee’s in danger and get her out, or decide the prowler is imaginary and stay, cut off from help if the bridge is swept away.

Lacey McCrae tracks down a killer in the frozen hills of rural Alberta.When Zoe and her teenage daughter discover an ice-covered corpse at her boss’s mountain chalet, ex-Mountie Lacey McCrae trades her Christmas shopping for Victim Services duty. The dead man is Eric, an intern at the Calgary oil company where Zoe works. Reported missing after a blizzard a month earlier, he was presumed dead by misadventure. But his missing car and other inconsistencies point to a suspicious death. When someone close to Lacey goes missing in similar circumstances, she fears the two cases may be connected. With help from old RCMP colleagues and tips that Zoe swears came from a ghost, Lacey tracks a ruthless killer through the merciless winter wilderness.

Danger lurks in the wilderness of the Rockies.After a dinner-party clash between entrenched oil interests and liberal Hollywood insiders, only Michael and Tyrone, the two children at the disastrous event, remain friends. But soon one dinner guest dinner guest is dead and two more are missing in the Alberta wilds.As Jan Brenner comforts the newly-bereaved Michael, Lacey McCrae infiltrates the Caine oil dynasty to learn which of Tyrone’s older half-brothers and their scheming mothers most want him gone. With the search for the missing heading into its third night, Lacey uncovers a massive hole in the Caine ranch’s security network as well as evidence of previous attacks on Tyrone. Then Jan discovers a long-buried connection between the two families that threatens Michael, too.As thunderstorms roll over the vast limestone cliffs of the Ghost Wilderness, danger stalks Michael, Tyrone, and the women who struggle to keep them safe.