Nominated for the 2023 Howard Engel Award for Best Crime Novel Set in Canada

Novemberâs rain in Toronto 1936 has turned into Decemberâs cold snap. Charlotte Frayne escapes being hit by a mud-splattered car racing round the corner at Queen and Spadina. The stranger who saves her turns out to be the man her boss, Mr. Gilmore, has helped to escape Germany and is now a refugee in need of shelter.

In a world still recovering from the War to End All Wars and the Spanish Influenza pandemic that killed fifty million people worldwide, and still in the throes of the...

âA grave injustice.â Those are the words in the letter sent to Charlotte Frayne, P.I., on a cold March morning.

The newspapers have reported on the arrest of two Black teenagers in a burglary, but did the pair actually commit the crime? Not according to the letterâs sender, Mrs. Olivia Brodie. A resident of the Toronto House of Industry â âthe poor houseâ â Mrs. Brodie was running an early morning errand when she witnessed, on the morning of the crime, two men behaving in a suspicious manner near the burgled home: two white men.

Meanwhile, Charlotte is investigating...