Erasing Memory

A remarkable Canadian crime debut praised as “a page-turner with a Sherlockian twist.”

MacNeice, a senior police detective in the southern Ontario industrial city of Dundurn, is returning from a pilgrimage to his wife's grave when he's called to a crime scene of singular and disturbing beauty. A young woman in evening dress lies gracefully posed on the floor of a pristine summer cottage so that the finger of one hand regularly interrupts the needle arm of a phonograph playing the Schubert Piano Trio. The only visible mark on her is the bruise under her chin, which MacNeice recognizes: it is the mark that distinguishes dedicated violinists, the same mark that once graced his wife. The murder is both ingenious and horrific, and soon entangles MacNeice and his team in Eastern Europe's ancient grievances, which reach out to breach all the walls that have been thrown up to keep the past at bay.

MacNeice must use his splendid but unorthodox powers of observation to stem the tide of events threatening to erase any trace of memory or history, leaving the target of the crime naked in the face of loss.

SCOTT THORNLEY has had a diverse career, from designing the Gemini Award for the Academy of Canadian Television to the logos for Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid. As president and creative director of Scott Thornley + Company (a strategic creative firm that defines, builds and maintains the brands of clients in Canada, the United States and Great Britain), Thornley has worked for twenty years with the pillars of the Canadian and international cultural and scientific communities in the field of applied storytelling. Having won over 150 international awards for design, he was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 1990. His interests also include drawing and photography--both of which he has exhibited.