Raye Anderson

And Then Is Heard No More

Opening night of the season at Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Centre is a glittering event on the city’s arts calendar, and this October, there is real drama happening offstage. Gerald Blaise, the company’s well-loved Artistic Director has failed to show up. Gerald’s car is found the following day, north of the city, when a couple of dogs take a keen interest in the bloody contents of the trunk. Since Gerald’s remains have been discovered outside the city limits, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway of the RCMP finds herself investigating the death.

PTC’s next play up is to be Shakespeare’s Macbeth, an unlucky play according to theatrical tradition. That rings true, for the staff, cast and crew as well as Roxanne. When a second body is found, this time in a city park, Roxanne finds herself having to work alongside the cynical Detective Sergeant Cooper Jenkins of the Winnipeg’s Police Services.

Theatre is a different world with its own jargon, where fact and fiction merge, lies are delivered as truth, and where people with active imaginations conjure up convincing stories. Who is Roxanne supposed to believe?

And We Shall Have Snow

• Shortlisted for the 2021 CWC Best Crime First Novel Award
• Finalist for the 2021 WILLA Literary Award for Original Softcover Fiction

New to the RCMP’s Major Crimes Unit, Corporal Roxanne Calloway is keen to make her mark. She’s young and ambitious. But when she’s called from the big city to tiny Cullen Village to lead the investigation into the death of the talented but devious star of the local music scene—discovered frozen and dismembered at the local dump—she finds much to contend with. The close-knit community does not give up its secrets willingly. Barely has she begun her investigation when another very dead, very frozen body disturbs the rural peace.

In the summer Cullen Village is filled with cottagers and day-trippers who flock to the lakeshore’s tranquil beaches. But when the temperatures drop the tourists disappear and the year-round residents settle in for months of bitter cold. The local book club likes to cozy up with good food and good friends—and, of course, good books.

But not this winter.

As the wind bowls and the snow deepens, the book club—and the village—are riven by suspicion and rumour. Can there be a serial killer in their midst? As tensions mount, Corporal Calloway scrambles to make sense of an ever more perplexing set of clues—before someone kills again.

Down Came The Rain

After a dangerous incident, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway has left the RCMP’s Major Crimes Unit and is now working as the Team Commander of the Fiskar Bay detachment. Roxanne is adjusting to her new job when the body of retired Sergeant Bill Gilchrist, her predecessor, is discovered in a ditch at the side of the road. Spring in Fiskar Bay often means flooding as the normally peaceful stream–home to ducks and teals and the occasional blue heron during the warmer months–fills to the top of its banks with fast-moving, murky brown water, sweeping chunks of ice and broken tree branches along with it. The locals from the close-knit community show up in droves to help sandbag and Roxanne organizes the local RCMP to help with the effort. But when another RCMP officer is found dead, tensions begin to rise as quickly as the water levels. Roxanne moved to Fiskar Bay to keep herself out of harm’s way, but with a cop killer on the loose, she isn’t sure who she can trust. Can Roxanne find the killer before it’s too late?

Sing a Song of Summer

A hot dry summer and a pall of smoke from the forest fires drifts over the lakeshore. Still, tourists and cottagers flock to Cullen Village, including the Borthwicks, who own Hazeldean, a treasured 100-year-old heritage cottage. Family matriarch Lois Borthwick, in a nearby care home, no longer recognizes any of her four children, each of whom has a decidedly different plan for the old place. The eldest, Donna, a successful local realtor married to a well-known MP, wants to tear it down and build anew. When Donna’s lifeless body is found hanged from a pier, the death is ruled a suicide. Case closed. Or is it?

After a life-threatening incident with the Major Crimes Unit, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway has decided to put family before ambition and seek a quieter, safer life with her young son. She now runs the local RCMP detachment in the heart of cottage country, and protocol dictates that she has no reason to participate in the Borthwick investigation, which is being led by her former protegee, Izzy McBain. As more of the unlucky Borthwick clan succumb to foul play, however, Roxanne cannot help but be drawn in.

The Dead Shall Inherit

Inheriting the Skipper’s House from her late aunt Deirdre MacPhail, a famed Scottish writer, looks like the solution to all Elspeth Laird’s financial problems — but this inheritance comes with a dark legacy.

New to Sulla Island’s wild beauty and fierce weather, Elspeth soon discovers a community divided by her aunt’s memory. Some cherish the tourism Deirdre brought, while others blame her for ruining their traditional way of life. Practical jokes escalate to sinister threats, and a murder confirms Elspeth’s worst fears: a killer is among them. With tensions rising and allies scarce, Elspeth must navigate a web of secrets and old grudges.

As legend says, the Skipper’s House brings doom to its owners. Elspeth must unravel the truth before she becomes the next victim of Sulla Island’s deadly legacy.