The open-and-shut case of the Fatal Flapper just won’t stay closed in this thrilling and immersive novel of 1920s Vancouver—another Raincoast Noir mystery.

Miss Dora Decker doesn’t look like the sort of young woman capable of stabbing her stockbroker employer twenty-five times with her high-heeled shoe; yet, thanks to a slow news day, she has become internationally famous as the Fatal Flapper, and the police are only too happy to make the arrest.

Meanwhile, Ed McCurdy, former muckraking journalist, has traded his typewriter for a career reading radio news as Mr. Good-Evening, Canada’s first “radio personality.” As a celebrity he draws resentment and paranoia from far and near, and he worries that the next murder victim will be himself.

Inspector Calvin Hook scours the wet, boozy streets of gritty 1920s Vancouver, piecing together a mystery that somehow connects Al Capone, Winston Churchill and Brother Osiris, the leader of a mystical cult on De Courcy Island.

John MacLachlan Gray is a multi-talented artist. As a playwright, composer and theatre director, he has created many acclaimed productions, most notably Billy Bishop Goes to War (1978), which won the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, was produced on and off Broadway, and was released as a feature film in 2011. As a writer, Gray has authored several books, fiction and non-fiction, including The White Angel (Douglas & McIntyre, 2017) and a series of mystery-thrillers: A Gift For The Little Master (Random House, 2000), The Fiend in Human (St. Martins/Random House, 2004), White Stone Day (Minotaur Books, 2005) and Not Quite Dead (Minotaur Books, 2007). He is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He lives in Vancouver, BC.

John MacLachlan Gray's profile page

“A dreadfully funny novel, and a fitting cap to his ‘Northwest Noir’ trilogy. As with his Victorian thrillers, Gray takes us down the slippery streets of 1920s Vancouver where, at the edge of the British Empire, world history plays itself out in murderous ways.”

John Harlan Hughes, author of <i>Dead in Tangier</i>

“Gray brilliantly returns us to his wonderfully vivid, sinuously imagined Vancouver, this time six months before the Crash. Superb.”

William Gibson