Peter Kirby: The Dead of Winter

I've long been a big fan of crime fiction, particularly crime fiction that is connected to a city I know. I like how crime writers can act as a kind of travel guide, showing us a city or even neighborhood through the lens of its underbelly: Natsuo Kirino and Miyuke Miyabe in Tokyo, Leonardo Padura in Havana, Jo Nesbo in Oslo, and many others.

Linda Leith Publishing has recently published Peter Kirby's The Dead of Winter, a fascinating novel, a chronicle of a series of crimes which rock the church and business establishments in the middle of a bleak, dark, and cold Montreal winter.

I read the book in the space of two days a few weeks back while visiting Berlin and it was one of the best crime books I've read this year: with a detached but intelligent protagonist, a cast of characters that are eminently familiar to most Montrealers, and it made me homesick though I'd only been away a week or so. In fact, oddly, it made me crave winter. It's chilling, creepy, and terribly engaging...

A book which makes me miss a cold Quebec winter while hanging out in a funky European late summer...now that's an engaging novel...