CP Avis

CP Avis is the pen name of a small town newspaper editor, publisher, and writer in southern Ontario.

She was born in 1960 in Toronto, Ontario to immigrant parents, and received her education at the University of Toronto, Carleton University, and the University of Waterloo, studying English, Art History, and Architecture.

Her Kate Messenger mystery series is based on her experiences, both real and imaginary, in the fraught business of newspaper publishing to which she has dedicated most of her working life.

Kate Messenger faces the trials and tribulations of getting her newspaper to print every month in the fictional Tecumseh County.

She navigates her world through the window of Asperger’s Syndrome, dealing with the strident chaos of day-to-day life with the help of her unfailing crutches — music, meditation, martial arts, and her West Highland terrier Alfred. Her healing joy is birding in the natural world.

It also helps to have an unfailingly wry sense of humour, the wisdom and guidance of her sarcastic old friend Dorothy Ambush, and the assistance of a cast of quirky characters.