Vancouver PI Dave Wakeland is back—this time staring down the knife edge of corruption and murder.

No one knows what happened to Tabitha Sorensen. The brilliant but troubled student seems to have vanished, leaving a deadly trail of missing millions and links to a notorious family of criminals. Hired to find her, Wakeland matches wits and fists with suburban gangsters, corrupt authorities, and a contract killer with a fondness for blades—one of which seems destined for Wakeland's throat.

Aided by Sonia Drego, a police officer and former lover with dangerous secrets of her own, Wakeland must uncover the deadliest killer that the morally challenged young detective has ever faced. From the back alleys of a rapidly changing Vancouver, to the wilds of Washington, to a suburban sprawl where things aren't what they seem, Wakeland crosses borders—and lines—in a treacherous game of cat and mouse that pushes him to his limits, and threatens to leave everything he cares for in pieces.

Sam Wiebe is the award-winning author of the Vancouver crime novels Cut You Down, Invisible Dead and Last of the Independents. His short stories have appeared in Thuglit, Spinetingler and subTerrain. He is a former Vancouver Public Library Writer in Residence and the winner of the 2015 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Sam lives in Vancouver.

 

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Awesome read; pick it up!

by K.A. Wiggins

Disclaimer: read a paperback ARC via Goodreads Giveaways

I loved Wiebe's first book (Invisible Dead) and this sequel did not disappoint! He does a great job of balancing a tense plot with compelling, fully-fleshed out characters and telling detail. His description of Vancouver and surrounding areas is spot-on (to the point that it's creepy because I'm not used to seeing my home through a crime-noir lens). The content is unsettling because of how true-to-life it feels, and how well he's woven real and known players into fictional representations.

There's a real complexity of motivation and sense of empathy in Wiebe's books that I appreciate. I don't read a lot of crime fiction, and the mysteries I do read tend toward historical, so I'm not sure if this characteristic is the norm for the genre or not. The characters are all flawed and conflicted (some significantly more than others), but in terms of the main cast and the protagonist in particular, you feel like they're trying to overcome their baser nature and generally want to help make things better.

I'll be back for more; this is definitely an author to watch.