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October 1, 2010

A pair of Trafalgar, Canada, coppers under stress.

After 25 years of marriage, Sergeant John Winters suddenly finds his wife Eliza, a former model, the leading suspect in the murder of fading fashion photographer Rudolph Steiner, who had an incriminating picture of her. If this sounds dire, consider that Constable Molly Smith has no less than three worries. Will her stalker Charlie Bassing stop before he kills her? Will her father survive a nasty fall and the ensuing hip surgery? And should she marry Adam Trocek of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? Winters, shunted off the Steiner case by a possible conflict of interest, obsessively pursues a series of B&Es that steadily lead him back to possible persons of interest in the Steiner matter. These include the lensman's fifth wife, the daughter of a known Canadian mobster; his brawling assistant, a young woman who demands the return of certain photographs belonging to her; and Steiner's much less successful brother, now working as a handyman at the hotel where Steiner died. Tension escalates between Winters and Eliza. Bassing's behavior toward Molly turns more aggressive. And a member of the RCMP antagonizes the small Trafalgar police force by misassigning blame, leaving Winters to set the error straight while Molly subdues Bassing alone.

Delany (Winter of Secrets, 2009, etc.) combines the crisp plotting of the best small-town police procedurals with trenchant commentary on such universal problems as love and trust.

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October 1, 2010
A murder turns personal for Sergeant John Winters, Constable Molly Smiths boss on the Trafalgar, British Columbia, police force. It turns out that the victim, a has-been fashion photographer, has a decades-old connection to Winters wife, Eliza, a former model. Winters, his trust in his wife shaken, is taken off the case as Eliza becomes a suspect, ahead of both the victims young and scarcely grief-striken widow and his ambitious assistant. Working with Winters on a series of home burglaries, Smith suffers the tensions of being a woman in a mans world; meanwhile, she deals with her fathers health problems, her love for Mounty Adam Tocek, and the presence of a stalker, parolee Charlie Bassing, who blames Smith for all his problems. An unusual protagonist for a crime series, Molly Smith is rarely the primary character when it comes to breaking cases (at least not through four outings), but her life outside work is given full sway. And yet, it is Molly who elevates this series from standard procedural fare into something quite memorable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

September 13, 2010
The murder of visiting fashion photographer Rudolph Steiner plunges Constable Molly Smith into big-time trouble in Canadian author Delaney's winning fourth mystery set in the bucolic mountain village of Trafalgar, B.C. (after 2009's Winter of Secrets). Green but game Smith and her boss, Sgt. John Winters, soon discover plenty of people with motive to kill the over-the-hill lensman, including Steiner's alcoholic trophy wife, his estranged brother, a jealous assistant, and one suspect closer to home, former model Eliza Winters, the sergeant's wife. If having her mentor taken off the case and replaced by a hostile Royal Canadian Mounted Police detective weren't bad enough, Smith struggles with other escalating problems, including a scary stalker and a freak accident that lands her beloved father in the hospital. Delaney missteps with two contrived late dramatic twists, but otherwise she deftly sprinkles clues—and red herrings—without ever slighting her engaging characters.