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John Farrow

Welcome to Lady Jail: a nest of killers, and not all of them are getting out alive …

Quebec, 1994. Fraud artist Abigail, the newest arrival at the Joliette Institution for Women, is struggling to adjust to the prison’s communal quarters. Her fellow inmates only give out the bare bones of their crimes, and it’s quite the roll call. Doi took a hatchet to her own daughter. Malka poisoned her husband. And that’s just for starters. Abigail keeps her head down, does her best to make friends with the band of killers, tries to survive.

But on an ordinary, quiet day, the extraordinary happens: a prisoner is found face-down in a toilet stall, a strangulation wire around her neck. Trouble, Abigail realizes, is ahead.

Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars is summoned from Montreal to investigate. He put Abigail away – and now she’s the prime suspect. But other, darker, forces are interested in Abigail, and Émile interferes at his own peril. For as he’ll soon discover, in Lady Jail, nothing is as it seems …

Severn House

The Émile Cinq-Mars Thrillers

Lady Jail

"Remarkable stuff. Fans of Bill James' Harpur and Iles saga of cops and robbers are in for quite a treat" - Kirkus Reviews Starred Review

Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars fails with a task set to him by his former captain and the consequences look set to spark a gangland war in Montreal.

Montreal, 1978. Newly promoted Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars attends the scene of seventeen break-ins at an apartment complex. Nothing more than stolen toasters. Cinq-Mars suspects that the burglaries are a trial run for a bigger heist . . . until he discovers a body pinned to a wall with a machete in one apartment.

 When the former captain of Night Patrol, Armand Touton, receives a tip from an undercover informant in the Mafia, Cinq-Mars is ordered to intervene with a prisoner's release: the man must stay behind bars. He fails with the task and the immediate consequences are devastating. 

 While trying to remedy his failure, solve the mystery of the break-ins and the case of the dead body, a chilling aspect emerges . . . gangland Montreal is bracing for war.

Roar Back

Getting inside is easy; the stress comes in getting out clean. A case of breaking and entering escalates after Émile Cinq-Mars transfers from the Night Patrol.

Montreal, 1975. Detective Émile Cinq-Mars is transferring from the Night Patrol – the notoriously tough department of officers in charge of watching over the city as it sleeps – to the day shift. His old superior has seen to it that he’s assigned to partner Yves Giroux, another ex-Night Patrol detective some say isn’t on the ‘up and up’.

 Getting in a house is easy for thief Quinn Tanner. The stress comes in getting out clean. On finding her getaway driver dead after her latest heist, she goes underground. 

 For his first case on the day shift, Émile is sent to the property that Quinn has just visited, and their paths are set to cross. But has she stolen something more valuable than she realizes . . . and who is hunting for her now?