Strange Things Done

August 15, 2016
Wild’s debut novel is set in the Yukon’s Dawson City, just as the freeze-up isolates the town, leaving its eccentric (and often fairly inebriated) citizens stuck with each other until spring. Journalist Jo Silver has come to take over the town’s tiny newspaper, running away from the guilt she feels about her coverage of a serial murder case at her last job at the Vancouver Sun. Shortly after arriving and too drunk to remember the details, Jo takes a ride home from one of the locals and lands right in the middle of a murder investigation. Murders and disappearances start to rack up, and her determination to investigate several prominent members of the town and strange nighttime activities at a gold mine make Jo a target for both the town’s moody and mysterious RCMP sergeant and the killer. The local residents are of the independent oddball variety one would expect in a remote outpost, particularly Jo’s roommate/landlady, Sally, an exotic dancer easily underestimated but a cracker-jack smart survivor. Although the ending feels too abrupt and pat, the killer’s motivation too thin, this is an entertaining story that captures much of the surrealism of the North and the colorful characters drawn to it. Agent: Carolyn Forde, Westwood Creative Artists (Canada).

September 1, 2016

Josephine Silver ("just call me Jo") is the newest reporter for the Dawson Daily. It's 2004 and winter is closing in on the quaint Victorian town of Dawson City, in Canada's Yukon Territory. When the body of Marla McAdam, a local activist and politician who opposes Dawson's biggest gold mining operation, is found in the Yukon River, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Sgt. Johnny Cariboo is interested in Jo's whereabouts on the evening in question. Only problem is, Jo was blind drunk and remembers very little, although she might have slept with town lothario Christopher Byrne. Local politics can be deadly. VERDICT A remote Canadian community hunkering down for a grim, lonely winter is the perfect setting for this atmospheric crime novel, which won the Arthur Ellis Award 2015 for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel. Its claustrophobic mood is well defined and bound to appeal to fans of Dana Stabenow and Steve Hamilton.

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