The Carpenter is set in a God-fearing small Ontario town in the 1980s, a town rife with secrets, grudges passed through the generations and an undercurrent of criminal behaviour. Lee King, the carpenter, is returning after a lengthy stay in maximum-security prison to a community that still recalls his horrendous crime. His mother is dying, and he wants to see her and his sister Donna after so many years. But things are still not quite right in the town as Stan Maitland, the retired cop, knows. Not only does he vividly remember Lee’s unexplained violence from years before, he is also caught up in a mysterious new death. He has just found the body of a young woman, Judy Lacroix, in a car at the abandoned drive-in on the edge of town. Stan can’t help getting involved, though his policing days are long over. And what about Lee King?will he ever understand where his violent streak comes from? When Lee finally faces who he is, the lives of his family are once again overturned.

A suspenseful, darkly humorous, emotionally engaging work, The Carpenter is a powerful debut novel. Like Dennis Lehane, Matt Lennox is completely at home in the back alleys and dark corners of small-town life?and of the human heart.

Born in Orillia, Ontario, MATT LENNOX first pursued a military career, becoming a captain in the Canadian army. He was posted to Afghanistan between 2008 and 2009, during which time he wrote many of the stories in his first collection, Men of Salt, Men of Earth. It was published by Oberon Press in 2009 and was shortlisted for the 2010 ReLit Award (the title story had been previously published in Best Canadian Stories in 2006). He has completed an MFA at the University of Guelph and lives in Toronto. For more information, visit Matt’s Facebook page.

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