Michael Blair – författare

This double edition of the Joe Shoe Mystery series presents Michael Blair’s The Dells and A Hard Winter Rain.

Presenting two novels in the Granville Island series by Michael Blair. Commercial photographer Tom McCall sees a lot of Vancouver in his job, but he sees more than he’d like to when murderers strike. Witty and fast-paced, these stories make Canada’s largest Western city as much a character as the criminals lurking therein. In Depth of Field, McCall’s business partner is killed, and in Overexposed a corpse shows up at McCall’s own home.

"Blair has a great eye for the small details of place, and his view of Vancouver is a delight. McCall and the gang are terrific characters who really click in this slick, smart book."— The Globe and Mail

Someone walked up to Joe "Shoe" Schumacher’s best friend, Patrick O’Neill, in a Vancouver restaurant and shot him dead. It looks like a professional hit, but who wanted O’Neill dead? Was it, as police believe, a "settling of accounts"? Was it Victoria, O’Neill’s beautiful but damaged wife? Or was it O’Neill’s boss, industrialist William Hammond, with whom O’Neill had a falling-out and with whom Victoria had once had a short-lived affair? Former cop, chauffeur, and bodyguard Joe Shoe sets out to find Patrick’s killer, and along the way he uncovers dark secrets going back years -secrets some people will kill to keep.

Photographer Tom McCall’s only regret about accepting an assignment from the beautiful Anna Waverley to photograph her boat for a potential buyer is that he has double-booked himself and needs to hand the assignment over to his partner, Bobbi.

Little does he know how much of a regret it will become. En route to the assignment, Bobbi is brutally beaten and left for dead.

As his partner lies in a coma, Tom searches for an explanation for the attack. Learning that Anna Waverley doesn’t actually own the boat she was supposedly interest in selling, and in fact that the woman claiming to be Anna Waverley may have been an imposter, Tom believes he knows where to start his investigation.

Just when Vancouver commercial photographer Tom McCall thought he’d got his life back on track, a complete stranger shows up dead on the roof deck of his floating home. No one seems to know who he is, he has no ID, and there’s not a mark on him. If that isn’t bad enough, a prospective new client seems to have had one Botox injection too many, his ex-wife wants to take his daughter off to Australia for a year; and someone’s leaving mutilated dolls on his front step.

And, of course, he’s in lust again.

No wonder he’s feeling a little overexposed.

For Joe Shoe, the return to his family home in north Toronto is more than just a trip down memory lane; it’s also a visit to a crime scene. No sooner has Shoe arrived in his old neighbourhood than he discovers that police are investigating a murder in the ravine near his home. And the murder victim is a man who lived in the neighbourhood 35 years earlier — and who moved away while still a suspect in a series of rapes that occurred in the very ravine in which he was ultimately murdered. The police investigation, and Shoe’s own inquiries, becomes intensely personal, as old friends, girlfriends, and even family members seem to have a connection to the murder victim, and reasons to want him dead. Compelling, deeply emotional, and at times even disturbing, The Dells is an accomplished novel by one of Canada’s rising stars of crime fiction.

Someone walked up to Joe "Shoe" Schumacher’s best friend, Patrick O’Neill, in a Vancouver restaurant and shot him dead. It looks like a professional hit, but who wanted O’Neill dead? Was it, as police believe, a "settling of accounts"? Was it Victoria, O’Neill’s beautiful but damaged wife? Or was it O’Neill’s boss, industrialist William Hammond, with whom O’Neill had a falling-out and with whom Victoria had once had a short-lived affair? Former cop, chauffeur, and bodyguard Joe Shoe sets out to find Patrick’s killer, and along the way he uncovers dark secrets going back years -secrets some people will kill to keep.

Just when Vancouver commercial photographer Tom McCall thought he’d got his life back on track, a complete stranger shows up dead on the roof deck of his floating home. No one seems to know who he is, he has no ID, and there’s not a mark on him. If that isn’t bad enough, a prospective new client seems to have had one Botox injection too many, his ex-wife wants to take his daughter off to Australia for a year; and someone’s leaving mutilated dolls on his front step.

And, of course, he’s in lust again.

No wonder he’s feeling a little overexposed.

For Joe Shoe, the return to his family home in north Toronto is more than just a trip down memory lane; it’s also a visit to a crime scene. No sooner has Shoe arrived in his old neighbourhood than he discovers that police are investigating a murder in the ravine near his home. And the murder victim is a man who lived in the neighbourhood 35 years earlier — and who moved away while still a suspect in a series of rapes that occurred in the very ravine in which he was ultimately murdered. The police investigation, and Shoe’s own inquiries, becomes intensely personal, as old friends, girlfriends, and even family members seem to have a connection to the murder victim, and reasons to want him dead. Compelling, deeply emotional, and at times even disturbing, The Dells is an accomplished novel by one of Canada’s rising stars of crime fiction.

Photographer Tom McCall’s only regret about accepting an assignment from the beautiful Anna Waverley to photograph her boat for a potential buyer is that he has double-booked himself and needs to hand the assignment over to his partner, Bobbi.

Little does he know how much of a regret it will become. En route to the assignment, Bobbi is brutally beaten and left for dead.

As his partner lies in a coma, Tom searches for an explanation for the attack. Learning that Anna Waverley doesn’t actually own the boat she was supposedly interest in selling, and in fact that the woman claiming to be Anna Waverley may have been an imposter, Tom believes he knows where to start his investigation.