From the winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel, Crime Writers of Canada, a new Chad Hobbes mystery set in a frontier where cultures clash on the eve of a new country's birth.

Prince Edward Island, 1871. An indebted British colony under pressure to join Canada. Marie-Evangéline, the daughter of a politician, is found savagely beaten to death; her newborn child is discovered miles away, floating in a cradle on a pond. Chad Hobbes must solve the murder. Is it political or private vengeance?

The Island is a place of open secrets—orphanages, prostitution, smuggling, corruption—among red cliffs, pink sands, patchwork fields and wildflowers. The Islanders include English landowners, Gaelic-speaking Scots and Irish, French-speaking Acadians and a few hundred Mic Mac. Chad comes to know a Gaelic poet and fisherman, an Irish Jesuit turned police sergeant, and demented twin brothers who must be kept apart. Who is the father of the baby? Who was the mother’s lover? Who is trying to kill Chad? Who can he trust? Who is in love with whom? The answers to these questions reveal great goodness, but ‘an evil tale.’

Seán Haldane was born in England, grew up in Northern Ireland, and has since lived between the UK and Canada, with long stints in Victoria, British Columbia, and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He has worked in Canada as a psychologist and neuropsychologist, mainly in memory clinics, and in the UK, most recently as head of neuropsychology in the National Health Service in East London. He continues to provide psychological assessments of criminals for the UK courts. He splits his time between houses in London, England, and Caraquet, New Brunswick. Haldane is author of many books of psychology, literary studies, and poetry, and two works of crime fiction, The Devil’s Making (winner of the 2014 Arthur Ellis Award) and Cradled on the Waves, both featuring the English policeman Chad Hobbes.

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