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Last of the Independents

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
2015 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize — Winner, Mystery
  • 2015 Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence Best First Novel — Nominated
  • Unhanged Arthur Award — Winner, Best Unpublished First Crime Novel
    What do a necrophile, a missing boy, and an unsavoury P.I. have in common? Private detective Michael Drayton is about to find out....
    Twenty-nine-year-old Michael Drayton runs a private investigation agency in Vancouver that specializes in missing persons — only, as Mike has discovered, some missing people stay with you. Still haunted by the unsolved disappearance of a young girl, Mike is hired to find the vanished son of a local junk merchant. However, he quickly discovers that the case has been damaged by a crooked private eye and dismissed by a disinterested justice system. Worse, the only viable lead involves a drug-addicted car thief with gang connections.
    As the stakes rise, Mike attempts to balance his search for the junk merchant's son with a more profitable case involving a necrophile and a funeral home, while simultaneously struggling to keep a disreputable psychic from bilking the mother of a missing girl.

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      • Booklist

        Starred review from May 1, 2014
        Buckle yourself in for this one. For a good chunk of the novel, we're reminded why we like detective tales: at their best, they're smart entertainment. Here's 29-year-old Vancouver PI Michael Drayton, who quotes Shakespeare and digresses agreeably on why cops go roguethey seek the justice the system fails to provideand leavens the fun with a drop of world-sorrow. Years ago, a little girl vanished, and his failure to find her haunts him. So does her family, who have convinced themselves she's alive somewhere and camp out in Drayton's office. But then a young man also disappears. Was he a hapless bystander in a carjacking? Was something else going on? Drayton investigates the matter, which oddly mirrors the earlier disappearance. His queries lead him into a tiresome world of tough-talking twerps and droning druggies. Readers can wonder: Is this all? Keep reading. In the last pages, the PI enters the heart of darkness, an evocation of evil all the more powerful for its understated style. Not a beach read but a literary achievement.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

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