ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD, CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA: BEST NOVEL
“Packed full of vivid characterizations, absorbing scenes, and impeccable writing… Wright has been aptly compared to Ruth Rendell and P.D. James, but it’s been a while since either of them has written anything as good as this.” The Philadelphia Inquirer
“… a truly splendid book - compassionate, humorous, erotic, and suspenseful. L.R. Wright understands people and is extraordinarily adept at transporting her insights onto the printed page. Adding riches to riches, she writes with style and grace and is masterful at creating a terrific sense of dread… [that] stayed with me long after I turned the last page.” Jonathan Kellerman
With A Chill Rain in January, Edgar Award-winning author L.R. Wright once again creates a marvelously crafted tale of evil and terror, played out against the deceptively tranquil backdrop of the Pacific coast town of Sechelt. In this, Karl Alberg’s third case, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Staff Sergeant is called to the scene of a simple accident, only to find himself suddenly involved in the destinies of two very different women.
Zoe Strachan’s life is arranged exactly as she wants it. She has a comfortable house, built to her own specifications, on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast: secluded, private, far away from the past she has left behind. Beautiful and enigmatic, Zoe has no friends and seemingly no family. Until her brother shows up one day to tell her that he’s found her childhood diaries, and that unless she pays him what he needs to keep quiet, he will reveal the secret she thought was buried forever.
Ramona Orlitzki’s life used to be arranged as she wanted it. She lived alone in her tidy cottage, went out for walks, kept up with the neighbours’ gossip, and enjoyed her little nip of gin at the end of the day. But now she’s been confined to the village nursing home and she doesn’t like it a bit. So Ramona escapes and goes into hiding, living first in her own house with the shutters drawn, then, fearing discovery, in an old cabin on Zoe’s property. It is a fateful decision.
Against his will, Karl Alberg finds himself being drawn deeper and deeper into these women’s lives to the detriment of his on-again, off-again relationship with the alluring librarian Cassandra Mitchell. And then suddenly he realizes the danger that lies ahead - a danger he must do everything to avert before it’s too late.
L.R. Wright’s first Karl Alberg novel, The Suspect, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery novel and was hailed by critics as equal to the best fiction by P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. Its sequel, Sleep While I Sing, confirmed that reputation. A Chill Rain in January has all the rich characterization, the sure sense of place, and the swiftly paced storytelling of its predecessors, and is sure to win its author a host of ever more admiring and enthralled readers.