Nick Wilkshire – författare

Hockey is a dangerous game, but it’s what happens off the ice that can get you killed … Curtis Ritchie is the only news in town when Ottawa takes the young hockey sensation first overall in the annual spring draft. But on the eve of Ritchie’s rookie season, the media frenzy over the signing and the controversial trades that secured the young star are eclipsed by news of his murder. As Ottawa Major Crimes Unit investigator Jack Smith reassembles Ritchie’s life, he is surprised by how much it differs from the fledgling star’s clean-cut image. A long list of suspects soon emerges, any one of whom had good reasons to want Ritchie dead. But there’s something else about the young phenom — a secret so profound that its revelation to the wrong person could only have meant Ritchie’s end.

For Charlie Hillier, a posting to Cuba could be the perfect place to start his new life — if he survives it.With his career stalled and the office abuzz about his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s indiscretions, Ottawa bureaucrat Charlie Hillier is desperate for a change. So when the chance at a posting to the Canadian embassy in Havana comes up, he jumps at it, grateful to get as far away as he can from his ex and his dead-end job at Foreign Affairs headquarters.At first, exotic Havana seems just the place to bury his past and start anew, but he didn’t count on finding a couple of kilos of cocaine under his bedroom floor, the kidnapping of a fellow diplomat, or the unsettling connection he uncovers between the former occupant of his house and a Colombian drug-runner. Before long, Charlie’s only concern is whether he’ll survive his posting at all.

In Moscow, the truth can be a dangerous commodity.Ottawa bureaucrat–turned-diplomat Charlie Hillier is back. Having barely survived his first posting in Havana, Charlie is eager to put what he learned there to good use. And it isn’t long before he's thrust into a fresh case — a technical writer from Toronto in a Moscow jail on dubious drug charges. Charlie has barely put a dent in the brick wall that is the Russian legal system when the jailed man turns up dead, the official explanation: suicide. And just when evidence to the contrary is discovered, the body is “accidentally” cremated by the authorities.Undeterred by bureaucratic stonewalling and determined to help the victim’s sister get to the bottom of her brother’s death, Charlie follows the sparse clues available. But what he uncovers brings them both far too close to powers more dangerous than they could have imagined. Suddenly, getting at the truth is less important than getting out of Russia in one piece.