Another freezing winter descends in seeming peace upon the Northern Ontario lake where realtor Belle Palmer lives genteelly with her dog, tropical fishes and classic film collection. But the snow-laden tranquillity is tragically disturbed when a good friend is lost in a freak snowmobile accident on an isolated lake. Or so it seems. Belle and others suspect foul play, but a motive and a criminal prove hard to find. Resort owners, anti-environmentalists and the new local drug dealers may all have had reason to want Jim Burian quietly removed, and information isn t forthcoming. Belle is...

In the sequel to Northern Winters Are Murder, it s now high summer in Northern Ontario, where everyone is bear bait, even the bears. Gunshots chase Belle Palmer from her quiet forest paths. Then, on her remote lakeside road, the savage and unexplainable murder of an elderly neighbour puts her on guard against two-footed killers. Does the answer lie in the woods? In the alleys of the Nickel Capital? Or in the black rock moonscape of an ecological disaster area Belle s investigations gradually uncover the sordid details of a sexual abuse scandal in a residential school years before that has...

In the third Belle Palmer mystery, Belle takes her friend and employee on a snowshoe trek. Miriam MacDonald brings her spoiled mini-poodle, a gift from investment broker boyfriend, who promises huge returns on her life savings. Later that week, Miriam discovers Elphinstone bludgeoned to death in his condo. Although Miriam s fingerprints alone are found on the Inuit sculpture murder weapon, the collapse of Elphinstone s empire has ruined hundreds of people and made him many dangerous enemies. Miriam is eventually charged with second-degree murder and then, as Belle struggles to pull the...

Northern Ontario realtor Belle Palmer is showing the lakefront mansion of a prominent businesswoman when she discovers the lady strangled in her bathtub. Could this third break-and-enter death reveal a serial killer at large in the Nickel Capital? The womans only child, a precocious twelve-year-old, comes to stay with Belles neighbours and wins her heart and theirs. Then after an argument, the boy disappears, riding off into the cold September night on his bicycle. Racing against time as fall temperatures plummet, Belle hooks up with a bumbling PI and joins the search. Belle must flee into...

Belle Palmers old high-school boyfriend rents a property on her road. Zoologist Gary Myers is studying the behaviour of elk in the wilderness., but soon he is found drowned. Did he fall and hit his head, or did a more sinister event occur? Meanwhile, someone has broken into his cottage, taking a camera and laptop. A clipping about poisoning on reserves leads Belle to visit the place of his demise. Seconds after she arrives, she is at gunpoint. She must paddle into the bush with no way back. Who has been causing havoc in the wilderness and will stop at nothing to cover their crimes?

In this new series by the acclaimed author of the Belle Palmer mysteries, RCMP Corporal Holly Martin takes charge of her first post, a detachment in tiny Fossil Bay on the wild south coast of Vancouver Island. Drunk drivers, speeders and the occasional theft from tourist cars lead the crime roster, but her first day starts with a distress call. A scuba diver has found the body of a girl in the surf. A tragic drowning caused by a fall? The late arrival of tox-scan results for crystal meth, the most recent plague to hit the island, raises ugly questions. Just before Holly makes an arrest, a...

Holly Martin must find a dangerous sexual offender before he strikes again.

Corporal Holly Martin s small RCMP detachment on Vancouver Island is rocked by a midnight attack on a woman camping alone at picturesque French Beach. Then Holly s constable, Chipper Knox Singh, is accused of sexually assaulting a girl during a routine traffic stop and is removed from active duty. At another beach a girl is killed. An assailant is operating unseen in these dark, forested locations.

The case breaks open when a third young woman is raped in daylight and gives a precise...