Maureen Jennings – författare

In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the naked body of a servant girl is found frozen in a deserted laneway. The young victim was pregnant when she died. Detective William Murdoch soon discovers that many of those connected with the girl's life have secrets to hide. Was her death on attempt to cover up a scandal in one of the city's influential families?

Dolly Merishaw is a midwife and an abortionist in Victorian Toronto, and although she keeps quiet about her clients, her contempt and greed leaves them resentful and angry. It comes as no surprise to Detective William Murdoch when she is murdered, but when a young boy is found dead in Dolly's squalid kitchen a week later, Murdoch isn't sure if he's hunting one murderer - or two.

After thirteen-year-old Agnes Fisher faints at school, her teacher is shocked to discover salacious photographs of the girl in her desk. When Agnes doesn't show up at school the next day, her teacher takes the photographs to the police. Murdoch, furious at the sexual exploitation of such a young girl, resolves to find the photographer - and to put him behind bars.

The Reverend Charles Howard sat in judgement on the poor, assessing their applications for the workhouse. But now he is dead, stabbed and brutally beaten in his office. Has some poor beggar he turned down taken his vengeance? Murdoch's investigation takes him into the world of the destitute who had nowhere to turn when they knocked on the Reverend Howard's door.

In 1858, a young woman on her honeymoon is abducted, taken across the border to the US and sold into slavery. Thirty-eight years later, the owner of one of Toronto's livery stables has been found dead, horsewhipped and hung from his wrists in his tack room. The investigation endangers Murdoch's own life - and reveals how harms committed in the past can erupt fatally in the present.

It's July 1936 and Toronto is under a record-breaking heat wave. Charlotte Frayne is the junior associate in a two-person private investigation firm, owned by T. Gilmore. Two events set the book’s plot in motion: an anti-Semitic hate letter is delivered to Gilmore, who up to now has not acknowledged his religion, and Hilliard Taylor, a veteran of the First World War requests the firm’s assistance in uncovering what he believes is systematic embezzlement of the Paradise Café, which he owns and operates with three other men, all of whom were prisoners of war. The two events, although seemingly completely unrelated, come together in this wonderful novel that brings to life characters who are as real to the reader as those of the Murdoch series.

“This is the second book in the Paradise Café series featuring private investigator Charlotte Frayne and it’s even better than the first. Jennings has made the jump from Victorian Toronto to the Depression era with ease and, once again, proves that Canadian history is far from dull.” — The Globe and MailCharlotte’s boss at T. Gilmore and Associates takes off on a mysterious trip to Europe, leaving Charlotte in charge of the detective agency. Mrs. Jessop hires the newly promoted Private Investigator to inquire into the untimely death of her son, a veteran injured in the Great War. The police ruled it a suicide, but Mrs. Jessop doesn’t agree and wants Charlotte to find out what really happened.Then Charlotte is hired to infiltrate a small women’s wear manufacturer to uncover communist agitators. When the factory supervisor is murdered on the job just as Charlotte starts to look into it, she gets seconded to the police to help find out what happened. The November clouds darken and Charlotte is left to struggle to solve two mysteries at the same time — until they intersect. Add an aging grandfather, an absent boyfriend, and a mad scheme to mount a controversial play at the Paradise Café and Charlotte has her hands full.

Nominated for the 2023 Howard Engel Award for Best Crime Novel Set in CanadaNovember’s rain in Toronto 1936 has turned into December’s cold snap. Charlotte Frayne escapes being hit by a mud-splattered car racing round the corner at Queen and Spadina. The stranger who saves her turns out to be the man her boss, Mr. Gilmore, has helped to escape Germany and is now a refugee in need of shelter.In a world still recovering from the War to End All Wars and the Spanish Influenza pandemic that killed fifty million people worldwide, and still in the throes of the Great Depression, Stephen Lucas is not just any refugee from the Nazi regime; he is in possession of information that could alter the course of history — but only if seen by persons in power and if acted upon. In a surprising twist of fate, Charlotte’s estranged mother reappears, wanting assistance in locating the son she gave up at birth twenty years before. Despite her turbulent feelings about her mother, Charlotte agrees to investigate, having no idea that the two cases will connect in surprising ways. Back at the Paradise Café, Christmas draws near and Charlotte’s beau, Hilliard Taylor, and his partners are in disagreement about the holiday concert. With her beloved grandfather in the mix, there’s no telling whether the show will end in good tidings or anarchy.

In 1940, England is desperate and fearful. The threat of a German invasion is real, and many German Nationals are interned in camps across the country. When a young woman is found murdered on a desolate country road, Tom Tyler, a detective inspector, finds himself drawn into an uneasy alliance with one of the Prees Heath internees, a psychiatrist, who is an expert on the criminal mind.

November, 1940. Tom Tyler, Detective Inspector is a troubled man. He is asked to help out in an inquiry into an explosion in a munitions factory that has killed several of the young women who have taken on dangerous work in support of the war effort. At first, it seems more than likely the explosion was an accident, but as Tom talks to the employees of the factory, the cracks begin to appear.

It is the summer of 1942, and after two difficult years, Tom Tyler is making a fresh start in Ludlow, Shropshire. On the outskirts of town, St. Anne's Convalescent Hospital, staffed by nursing sisters who are also Anglican nuns, has been established in an old manor house to help victims of the war. But their peace is shattered when a horrifying double murder is discovered on the grounds. Tyler must discover how the crime was committed in such a secluded place, where many of the patients are unable to walk or see and most are deeply traumatized. When he begins to receive mysterious letters recounting terrible crimes, he realises that he is not only seeking a murderer, but that the horrors of the war are closing in on a place of refuge.

It is late 1942, and Detective Inspector Tom Tyler is settling into his placement in Ludlow, Shropshire, which is crowded with evacuees and others fleeing the German bombs. On the town's outskirts is an Italian PoW camp, whose inmates work on local farms. Fraternizing is forbidden but, as Tyler knows only too well, the human heart has a way of crossing boundaries.Tyler is kept busy enforcing wartime regulations, until an old man goes missing, and his body is later discovered in a secret hideout supposedly known to very few. What's more, the two evacuee children who found the body are clearly not telling the whole truth, but when Tyler tries to question them further, they vanish from their foster home. A crime has clearly been committed, but there is no shortage of suspects...

Set in 1917 during the home front of WWl Toronto, starring an older William Murdoch.

Detective Murdoch's life and work beoome tragically entwined when his sister, who long ago fled to a convent to escape their abusive father, is on her deathbed. Meanwhile, the same father has been charged with murder and calls on his estranged son to prove his innocence. But, knowing his father as he does, what is Murdoch to believe?

Based on Maureen Jennings' award-winning novels, 1890s Toronto-based police detective William Murdoch uses radical forensic and scientific techniques to solve some of the city's most intriguing murders. This companion looks at every aspect of all 8 seasons of Murdoch Mysteries, from the regular characters and their relationships, to the history of the period, and goes behind the scenes to examine every aspect of the production.