Catherine Macdonald

Put on the Armour of Light

Secrets are lurking behind the proper exteriors of Winnipeg’s turn-of-the-century houses.

In June 1899, the Reverend Charles Lauchlan’s industrious life as a young Presbyterian minister is knocked off the rails when he learns that his former university roommate has been arrested on murder charges.

The chief of police says it’s an open-and-shut case, but Sergeant Setter — labelled as a misfit by his fellow officers — disagrees. Lauchlan and Setter become uneasy allies in a search that takes them from the sleaziest bars to the most sumptuous drawing rooms of turn-of-the-century Winnipeg. On the way, Lauchlan uses his pastoral skills in ways never anticipated in the seminary. As time runs out he must risk everything, even his heart, in order to find the real killer.

So Many Windings

Reluctant amateur detective, Reverend Charles Lauchlan, departs the prairie city of Winnipeg and travels abroad to Scotland with his fiancé Maggie on a bicycle tour of the Highlands. Two near fatal accidents put members of the tour on edge and, to make matters worse, a shadowy figure seems to be observing their every move. Stuck in the remote Highland countryside, the group is thrown back on their own resources. While Charles and Maggie are trying to decipher what these strange events mean, they make another grisly discovery. It’s murder most foul and we’re not just talking about Scottish weather. So Many Windings is the second in a three-book series that began with Put on an Armour of Light (winner of the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction). Deftly wrought, meticulously researched, and scintillating with charm and period prose, Macdonald weaves a winding, cross-country tale that will require all of the detective’s ingenuity and test the measure of his resolve.