The Suspect - Hardcover

L.R. Wright

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0709027818 ISBN 13: 9780709027812

Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd, 1986

Synopsis

Canadian crime queen L.R. Wright distinguished herself by being the first Canuck to earn the prestigious Edgar Award for her mystery debut, The Suspect. Set on British Columbia's picturesque Sunshine Coast, it introduces RCMP Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg--the hero of over a dozen subsequent novels, including Arthur Ellis Award winners A Chill Rain in January and Mother Love--as well as Wright's distinctive technique of letting her readers know who commits the crime right up front. In Wright's psychological mysteries, the central question is always not who, but why.

In The Suspect, 80-year-old retiree George Wilcox bashes an elderly neighbour over the head and calmly heads home to hide the murder weapon in plain sight and tend to his domestic chores:

It didn't seem unreasonable to wait until the sky clouded over before going off to jail. This was probably the last dry sunny spell he'd know as a free man. He had no delusions on that score. He knew they'd catch up with him sooner or later. He had begun to hope, though, that he might first enjoy another season in his garden.

Alberg suspects that Wilcox is the culprit, but suspicion alone isn't enough to bring charges. In the course of delving deep into the suspect's history, Alberg embarks on a parallel personal quest, along the way discovering a soulmate in insightful librarian Cassandra Mitchell. --Deirdre Hanna

About this title

From the Publisher

L.R. Wright is the "queen of Canadian crime fiction", whose writing has been described by Anne Tyler as possessing "a special kind of integrity."

About the Author

L.R. Wright died in February 2001. She is the author of fourteen previous novels. She twice won the Arthur Ellis Award for A Chill Rain in January and for Mother Love, which also won the Canadian Authors Association Award for literary fiction. She received the coveted Edgar Allan Poe Best Novel Award, for The Suspect.

Edition details

• Publisher: Robert Hale Ltd
• Publication date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0709027818
• ISBN 13: 9780709027812
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224