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L.R. Wright

This Edgar Award–winning debut kicks off a cult favorite crime series with a noirish tale of murder set along Canada’s Sunshine Coast.

 To Karl Alberg, the coastal town of Sechelt, just north of Vancouver, looks like the perfect place to soothe a psyche that’s been battered by big-city police work. Bees buzz among the roses, and the local librarian is attractive, intriguing, and unattached. Perhaps he has at last come in from the cold. But sunny towns can conceal a lot of secrets—some of them bleak enough to make a man yearn for some nice straightforward urban crime.

 In 1986 L.R. Wright’s The Suspect became the first Canadian novel to win an Edgar award, beating out titles by Ruth Rendell and Jonathan Kellerman. It went on to become a cult favorite among mystery fans, who prized its delicately etched sense of melancholy and intriguing character studies of the cop, his quarry, and the enigmatic librarian who proves an unlikely bridge between the two.

Felony & Mayhem Press

Karl Alberg

The Suspect

A murder on Canada’s Sunshine Coast hits close to home for a former city cop in a mystery of “excellent writing, inventive plots and realistic characters” (Publishers Weekly).

 Karl Alberg was a big-city cop, for Pete’s sake. He solved crimes involving gangsters, druglords, real hardened criminals. He couldn’t possibly be stumped by a murder in the sweet coastal town of Sechelt, British Colombia. Yet here he is, facing one of the most gruesome and baffling murders of his career.

 The woman was found propped against a tree, her face scrubbed clean, and her neck slit from one side to the other. And that is all anyone can tell Alberg. Her name? No one knows. So Alberg hires a local artist to draw her picture; maybe someone will recognize her . . . without, you know, the sliced-up neck. It’s a brilliant idea. The answers pour in. And they all point to one suspect, which should make Alberg very happy. Except that the individual requiring Alberg’s professional focus is the last person he wants to think about.

Sleep While I Sing

The Canadian cop is up against a small-town femme fatale in a thriller “rich in humorous and poignant aspects as well as fierce suspense” (Publishers Weekly).

It’s sunny days for Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, even as everyone else in Canada is shivering. The magnificent Cassandra Mitchell, who has a disconcerting habit of disappearing from both the town of Sechelt and Alberg’s bed, has appeared once again. And though Alberg is effectively the police chief, the most pressing thing on his desk right now is the spunky old lady who has apparently absconded from her retirement home—most likely in search of a good martini.

But a storm is brewing for Alberg, just a few miles down the peninsula. Zoe Strachan, Sechelt’s newest resident, is the sort of enigmatic seductress who could get away with murder. And when her ne’er-do-well brother takes a fatal tumble down her basement steps, it’s time for Zoe to wrap the local law enforcement around her little finger. And while Alberg is certainly nobody’s fool, this case has him tied up in knots.

A Chill Rain in January

Summer along Canada’s Sunshine Coast is murderously hot in this moody mystery thriller by the Edgar Award–winning author of The Suspect.

RCMP Sergeant Karl Alberg is attempting to escape the heat with his girlfriend Cassandra when they discover a body on the beach, fresh from a fatal plunge into the icy, all-too-appealing waves. As Alberg knows from his days as a big-city cop, heat can make people do strange things—such as the recent act of vandalism at a local petting zoo. But was there something more to this untimely death?

Meanwhile, Alberg’s personal life also threatens to boil over. Not only is his daughter visiting, but his ex-wife is getting married again. Weaving these provocative strands through a Pacific Northwest heatwave, acclaimed author L.R. Wright once again delivers an atmospheric mystery with “a most appealing protagonist—akin to P. D. James's Dalgleish and Ruth Rendell's Wexford, but with a quintessentially Canadian voice” (Publishers Weekly).

Fall from Grace

The Edgard Award–winning author of The Suspect returns with another “stunning mystery” set along Canada’s Sunshine Coast—“the ending is a real killer” (The New York Times).

 In this masterpiece of psychological suspense, the real villain is self-delusion; it inflicts more damage than even the craziest serial-killer. In the case of Emma O’Brea, the delusions concern her marriage: When her husband Charlie disappears it quickly becomes apparent that Emma was the only person in Canada who didn’t recognize how desperate he had been to leave.

 Then there’s Eddie Addison, an overgrown delivery boy, far from the sharpest knife in the drawer, and dangerous obsessed with a pretty young student. Eddie and Emma would seem to have little in common, but when Inspector Karl Alberg is called in to solve the riddle of Charlie’s vanishing act, the two sets of disturbing delusions begin to converge, with a climax that even the canniest reader is unlikely to see coming.

Prized Possessions

The quaint dramas of colorful locals turn dark indeed in this crime thriller set along Canada’s Sunshine Coast by the Edgar Award–winning author.

 Gordon Murphy has a Midas touch for business, but he’s all thumbs when it comes to love. So Sergeant Karl Alberg isn’t too concerned when Murphy sets his sights on Karl’s girlfriend Cassandra. These days the happy couple share both a bed and a bed and breakfast. Besides, Alberg has some actual policing problems to contend with: a stolen coin collection, a hapless would-be burglar, local worthies hollering about the state of a fellow citizen’s front yard.

 It all sounds charming and cozy. But Alberg’s Sechelt, British Colombia, is no Cabot Cove. L.R. Wright, the “master of the psychological thriller,” once again demonstrates her talent for getting at the dark roots under the roses (Booklist, on Mother Love).

A Touch of Panic

A housewife’s murder draws a Canadian detective into a twisted family history in this novel by the award-winning “master of the psychological thriller” (Booklist).

Maria Buscombe was a housewife living in Sechelt, British Colombia, until seven years ago when she suddenly abandoned her family. Now it seems she has returned—just in time to be murdered. What made her leave? What made her return? And who was sending her money and photographs of her daughter all that time?

These are the questions nagging at Sergeant Karl Alberg as he searches for Maria’s killer. Meanwhile, Alberg’s longtime companion Cassandra Mitchell is doing some nagging of her own. Alberg had promised, after all, to hang up his policeman’s hat.

Mother Love

A teenager arrested for his parents’ murder has a Canadian cop investigating the dark heart of his sunny seaside village in this acclaimed mystery series.

 Vancouver's “Sunshine Coast” is famous for its beautiful vistas, but closer inspection reveals a strong dose of dysfunction among its quaint villages. Eliot Gardener is maddeningly sullen as only an angry fourteen-year-old can be. He's also, apparently, a double-murderer, having whacked both of his parents with a machete. At least it’s an open and shut case for Canadian Mountie Karl Alberg. Or is it?

 Eliot may be guilty, but what drove him to commit such a grisly crime? As Alberg tries to get the troubled boy to talk, he finds himself dealing with dysfunction in his own life. His former neighbor bears him some serious ill will. And he keeps popping up wherever Alberg happens to be. Suddenly Alberg is watching a number of simmering pots . . .and the tension is only heating up.

Strangers Among Us

A serial killer stalks the Sunshine Coast in the final novel of this Edgar Award–winning series by the “master of the psychological thriller” (Booklist, on Mother’s Love).

 The ninth and final book in the Karl Alberg series makes a wonderfully elegant end to the saga of the tiny town on Canada’s “Sunshine Coast,” the policeman who tries to catch the town’s baddies, and the sensual, smart-mouthed librarian he loves. Alberg and Cassandra are at long last getting married, and Alberg has a new sergeant, the beautiful and enigmatic Edwina Henderson.

 But don’t be fooled by all the sunshine. Sechelt, British Colombia, once again has more than its share of murders. And the serial killer who’s busy knocking off residents—someone known as “the avenging Angel”—may be the darkest character Alber has ever faced.