As if Joe Barley doesn’t have enough on his mind. His job as a part-time instructor at Hambleton College is likely to be eliminated, and his partner, Carole, is expecting their first child. He’s also been assigned to find the identity of a mole in the English Department who is part of a nasty and embarrassing letterwriting exchange in a student newspaper. But the stresses of his job and personal life are compounded by the disappearance of a member of the Hambleton faculty, and Joe begins to hear rumours that the teacher was involved with a drug ring run by the Russian mob.

The long-awaited third instalment in the Joe Barley Mysteries series, A Likely Story showcases the biting humour, engrossing storytelling, and keen eye for the ordinary that have made Eric Wright one of the most beloved crime writers in Canada.

Best known as a writer of award-winning detective fiction, including the Charlie Salter mysteries, Eric Wright has also written a comic novel (Moodies Tale) and Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man, his 1999 memoir which was nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. (The first chapter of that memoir first appeared in The New Yorker.) Eric helped to set up and was the first director of the publishing program at Ryerson University. He lives in Toronto.

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“Wright weaves all of this into a tight story that nips around Toronto like an autumn wind … Smart and beautifully crafted, this is Wright at his very finest.”

The Globe and Mail

“Reveals Wright as a writer who’s growing funnier with the years … in parts of A Likely Story, the laughs, transcending mere chuckles, belong to the out-loud category … he writes his way around Hambleton’s campus politics in such nimble fashion that the reader can’t be sure where reality leaves off and satire picks up … Wright produces creeping suspense from among this skullduggery, but perhaps best of all, he generates more than the usual level of comic entertainment.”

The Toronto Star