Smeg

Set in the wintery backdrop of Edmonton, fans of Louise Penny's The Three Pines Mystery series will enjoy this quirky, cozy-adjacent detective story of Detective Smeg pulled back on duty for one last case.

Former detective and perpetual grouch Charlie Smeg is old-at least that’s the way he feels-and newly retired from the Edmonton Police. He's washed up, burnt out, and unappreciated by younger cops clawing for his job. He’d been a good detective but methods change, times change.

He’s looking forward to a life of solitude, a good book, and staying indoors during the winter months. Unfortunately, his former boss has other plans. He’s not even a week out of the job when she asks him to mentor rising star Meaghan Byatt-one of those upstart detectives-on her first case in the homicide department.

The case is an odd one from the get-go, enough that Smeg decides, against his better judgment, to help.

With a jobless stepson living at home who won't stop encouraging him to get with the times, and his growing fondness for Byatt making him begrudgingly look forward to human interaction, this case might be what Smeg needs to get back in the game.

Diane Wishart is the author of The rose that grew from concrete: Teaching and learning with disenfranchised youth, published by the University of Alberta Press. For this work Diane interviewed many at-risk students in an urban high school, young people who have fallen between the cracks in the public school system. What she discovered weren’t statistics, but teens and their experiences, needs, and personalities. Diane’s work with young people also informed the narrative published in Case studies in educational foundations: Canadian perspectives, published by Oxford University Press.

Diane has 20 years of experience in the field of education, including work with Alberta Advanced Education, consulting with post-secondary institutions. Her past teaching and academic publishing includes high school literacy programs for youth, as well as teacher education at the University of Alberta. Diane’s first novel, Smeg was inspired by attendance at a creative writing workshop on villains, and their counterpart, the detective.

Diane has been a member of the Alberta Writer’s Guild writing critique group since 2011, and in July 2014 attended Sage Hill Writing Experience in Lumsden, Saskatchewan where she worked with Merilyn Simonds and Wayne Grady. Diane has attended a variety of writing workshops put on by the Canadian Authors Association, University of Alberta, and MacEwan University. Beginning in January 2021 Diane took How to Write a Novel: Edit and Revise taught by Annabel Lyon and Nancy Lee through the University of British Columbia. The content of this course guided the re-write of Smeg.