2016 Manitoba Book Awards’ Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction — Winner
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.

Catherine Macdonald enjoyed a varied career as an archivist and freelance historian before turning to crime. Her first mystery novel, Put on the Armour of Light, won the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction at the 2016 Manitoba Book Awards. Fifty Words For Rain, forthcoming from At Bay Press, is the sequel to that book and finds the characters in Scotland where they tour the Highlands by bicycle.

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• Winner, Manitoba Books Awards’ Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction

“An engaging read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“In this exuberant patchwork quilt of 1899 Winnipeg, a number of painful truths bubble to the surface as Lauchlan uncovers the real culprit.”–Winnipeg Free Press