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Fiction Private Investigators

The Road to Heaven

A Patrick Bird Mystery

by (author) Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2024
Category
Private Investigators, Noir, Historical
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781459753723
    Publish Date
    Jun 2024
    List Price
    $24.99
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781459753747
    Publish Date
    Jun 2024
    List Price
    $10.99

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Description

A gripping noir mystery introducing artless young detective Patrick Bird, set in Toronto’s Parkdale during the tumultuous ’60s.

“I didn’t kill her. I had the thought, the idea. What’s the saying? The road to heaven is paved with bad intentions?”

Police academy burnout turned private eye Patrick Bird works divorce cases, using his camera to catch the unfaithful and the lonely looking for love in rented rooms. But his easy routine is shattered by a new case involving a missing girl.

Sixteen-year-old Abbie Linklater hasn’t been home for three days. Her mother believes Abbie’s getting an abortion. Her twin brother thinks she’s studying at the library. Her best friend couldn’t care less. Her father has no idea; he just wants her home without involving the police.

Before the sun sets on the first day of his investigation, as Bird roams the streets of Toronto looking for the runaway, he’s caught a drifter prowling in the Linklater’s backyard, stumbled into a creepy church with a belligerent minister, sparred with the client, been hit by a car, and discovered some loose ends in a bank robbery gone wrong a decade earlier.

And that was before he found the body.

About the author

Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson won the 2023 CWC Best Crime Novella Award for The Man Who Went Down Under published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. The Road to Heaven, featuring detective Patrick Bird, is his first novel. He lives in Toronto.

Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson's profile page

Excerpt: The Road to Heaven: A Patrick Bird Mystery (by (author) Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson)

Tuesday, July 13, 1965

I

The hallway stretched out before me, the bright lights held in sconces, the closed doors on either side, the carpet’s orange, black, and blue quadrilaterals overlapping in a hophead’s nightmare. Around a corner and still more carpet reaching into the distance, still more doors on the right and left, still the sharp lights burning on the walls. An ice machine clunked and gurgled in an alcove to the left. My watch read 12:04 a.m. I was late; but how could I have known the hallway was this long? The numbers on the doors were counting up with each step. Here it was, room 724. My fist made two sharp raps on the panel. I reached for the knob, turned it, and pushed.

There was darkness, and movement in the darkness, rustling, the sharp intake of breath, and the smell of sweat and skin. The opening door threw an oblong of yellow on the floor that widened as it swung inward. I felt for the light switch with my left hand and raised the camera with the right. The flashbulb popped just before the light came on and the scene appeared frozen. The pale back lifting off the bed, a second body underneath, the limbs once intertwined, now disentangling, a flay of dark hair spread out on the pillow, her face obscured beneath his torso. His neck swivelled at the noise of my entrance, and his bulging eyes, caught in the freeze-frame of the flash, were wide, staring, surprised. In that frozen moment, it was possible to see the change in his expression as lust leaked out, and anger and fear filled the vacuum. The bulb popped again, and he blinked as he turned and rose off the bed, the sheets falling from him, his salt-and-pepper hair glinting in the light, her hands holding on to his shoulders as she was pulled up by his movement. He emerged from the bed, the roar of fury on his face, the sagging flesh of his chest under a growth of grey moss. The woman was naked too, younger — much younger — her black hair falling onto her shoulders as she sat up. He pulled free from her grasp before the third flash flared. With his feet on the floor, he came at me, quick for an old guy and swiped at the camera.

“Easy, this is my livelihood.”

“You bastard. I’ll kill you.”

“Not in front of a lady.”

“She’s no lady, she’s a fucking —”

“I guess we can agree on one thing” — I cut him off — “she’s not your wife.”

“This was a set-up.” The whole time he was grabbing at the camera and I was holding him off with the other hand.

“I put the chain on the door.” He turned to look at her, beginning to figure it out.

The camera was held high, trying for a couple more pictures of his pathetic attempts — these ones not of the deed but strictly for entertainment value. There wasn’t much you could do in no clothes without looking like a fool, and he looked like one, trying to rip the Kodak out of my hand while I, in my nattiest Tip Top Tailor duds, stood just inside the door frame.

The camera was up out of his reach. It clicked, and time stood still again as the light flooded the interior, capturing the wounded animal, blinking, and sweating, secreting some noxious fear that crawled up my nose. The flash stoked his rage. He stopped swiping at the camera and tried a wild hook to my chin. I rolled to my right, stepped back, and watched it sail by with a grin.

He gave up on me and turned to the woman in the bed. She’d pulled the sheet up and held it over her chest with crossed arms.

“You bitch.”

She didn’t yawn, but her sleepy eyes didn’t express much interest.

“Leave the lady alone.” I stepped into the room.

“I told you before she’s no lady. She’s a two-bit tramp.” His anger was petering out; his bark had lost the teeth behind it. Shame and defeat showed in his eyes as he reached toward the floor, scooped up a handful of clothes, and retreated behind the bathroom door. The lock clicked. I agreed: getting dressed was best done at a table for one. Hopping around on one foot trying to find a pant leg wasn’t a pretty spectacle.

Victoria stepped out of the bed. She knew how it was done; she picked up the minidress — the pattern of orange, yellow, and red rectangles on a maroon background wasn’t so far off the fever-dream carpet on the other side of the door — slipped it over her head, pulled it down, smoothed the front, slid her feet into plain black pumps, scooped her panties and bra off the floor, dropped them into her purse, looked at me, and mouthed, “Let’s go.”

I held the door for her, and she made a two-step detour to scoop some bills off the dresser, before passing into the hall and turning left, away from the direction I’d come.

“Elevator’s the other way,” I said.

“Stairs,” she said.

I followed behind. It was the first time I’d been in the Royal York; she knew the routine. She reached the fire door and didn’t wait on me, but pulled it open. Once we were in the cement stairwell, I said, “Did you see the look on his face? I can’t wait for the photos.”

She shushed me, and I shushed. Seven floors down, round and round, eleven steps on each run. Beige walls and a pale grey handrail, fluorescent lighting and chips in the paint. It was eleven minutes past midnight and the lobby was quiet, even quieter in the corner where we emerged back into a world of lush colour. Victoria never broke stride. Six steps led us down to a back door that opened on Piper Street, the short service road that ran behind the hotel. She stopped on the sidewalk, looked at her reflection in the window of a parked vehicle, and adjusted stray strands of hair. “I need a ride. Where’s your car?”

Coming out the back door, it took me a minute to orient myself. “It’s on Station Street, across Front.”

Victoria nodded her head, reached for my elbow, and pulled me beside her. “Pretty safe now, but if anyone asks, we’re heading home after a night at the theatre followed by a nightcap.” We walked out to York and turned south. Red brake lights, the angry blare of a horn, and the truncated rainbow of the traffic signal brought the world alive.

“Good idea. We could make it real. What do you say to a drink?”

“No.”

“What’d we see?”

“What?”

“At the theatre.”

Guys and Dolls. It just opened.”

“A musical?”

“That’s right, Patrick.”

“No, I can’t do it.”

“You don’t have to watch it. You just say you did.”

“I don’t know. Singing and dancing.”

“It’s about your world, Detective Bird: hustlers, molls on the make, low-life dives, PIs like you, the whole bit.”

“Maybe.”

We lapsed into silence as we passed onto the dark stretch of Station Street, parked cars, yellow pools beneath street lamps, and the half-darkness of night in the city. I opened her door, and she sat on the bench and swung her legs in.

I went around the other side and dropped the camera on the back seat. She slid over and cozied up to me, and I put the car in gear and my arm around her shoulder.

“Don’t get frisky,” she said.

“It’s all for show.”

“I’m a method actor.”

She poked a finger in my ribs, and it backed me up a little.

“You still living in the same place?”

“I’ve moved.” She named a western suburb that was a distance away and I asked about cross streets, and she recommended the highway they’d just built along the lake. I retrieved my arm from around her shoulders and used it to crank the wheel and turn south. I gave the engine some gas up the on-ramp and there we were on the new expressway, elevated above the city, with the lake on our left and tall new buildings sprouting up on our right.

“You were late.”

“Just a minute or two.”

“More than that. Let me see your watch.”

I held my wrist out for her to examine.

“It’s fine — which means the fault is yours. Every minute matters. It’s not easy to choreograph that kind of dance. It’s just about hell. Slow down, speed up, hurry up and wait. Everyone’s got their own timetable. Most guys think they can’t wait. Some of them really can’t. Next time, be on time. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.” She dug around in her purse and found a stick of gum, peeled the wrapper, and dropped it in the ashtray.

“Everything was okay?” I asked.

“Fine. I just need to know you’re going to be there when you’re supposed to be there.”

“Sid’ll give you a call in the morning and settle up.”

“I know how this works. I’ve been at it a good lot longer than you.”

The highway was still under construction and didn’t make it all the way to her neighbourhood. The car decelerated as we came onto the service road that ended in a traffic light. She guided me through the dark streets lined by bungalows and we stopped in front of a low-rise apartment on a dead-end that ran down to the lake.

Editorial Reviews

The Road to Heaven is a compelling debut and a must read for fans of the hard-boiled genre. Stefanovich-Thomson masterfully recreates the seedier side of ’60s Toronto with pitch-perfect description in this intriguing mystery of a family in crisis. Conflicted PI Patrick Bird proves a sardonic narrator with anger issues and his own dark secrets, making him the unlikely hero tasked with finding the family's missing teenager. A beguiling and well-crafted mystery.

Brenda Chapman, author of the Stonechild and Rouleau and the Hunter and Tate mysteries

In this taut and stylish debut, Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson plunges the reader headlong into a Toronto period piece affectionately stage lit by noir. The opening scene’s flashbulb pop exposes the loneliness and corrosive underbelly of a thickly peopled mystery. PI Patrick Bird’s dogged pursuit of a missing persons case is captured with a wry awareness of a gaping postwar generational divide and a pitiless eye for intimate affairs.

Andrew Steinmetz, author of Because

Patrick Bird has had a difficult life, made more difficult by the massive chip on his shoulder and the way he upsets people with his impudence and smart mouth. But things start looking up when he lands a gig as a PI. He's pleased when his boss presents him with a challenging case: to find Abbie, the missing teenage daughter of wealthy local businessman Trent Linklater. But it’s not just that Abbie is missing; it’s the reason she’s missing that makes the case so difficult. Abbie was looking into her mom's fatal shooting during a bank robbery 14 years ago, which left Abbie and her twin, Nelson, orphaned. Her dad then married the kids’ nanny, and the relationship between Abbie, Nelson, and their stepmom has been rocky, to say the least. But the more Patrick investigates, the more baffling the case becomes. The truth he eventually discovers is a shocking tale of family tensions, promiscuity, callous ambition, greed, and deadly revenge that leaves Patrick unsettled and dissatisfied. Set in Toronto in the 1960s, this twisty noir thriller will appeal to fans of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy.

Booklist

Raw and twisty, The Road to Heaven takes you through hell to get to the promised land. Painfully human, we bear witness to what happens when people's longings crash into bright lights and dark alleys. Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson's prose reads like poetry, spare, yet laden with symbolism and meaning. A bright new star is shining among us . . . a brilliant debut.

Jane K. Cleland, author of the Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries

A taut noir that introduces Patrick Bird, a rookie PI who is as self-destructive as he is effective. This edge-of-the-chair page-turner is full of suspense, evocative settings, and unforgettable characters trapped in a web full of secrets and lies.

Liv Spector, author of The Rich and the Dead

Having published Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson’s Black Orchid Novella Award–winning story, it’s a special delight to welcome his first novel. From the setting — a richly evoked Toronto in the sixties — to the cynical but committed narrative voice, to the dark family dynamics that complicate the search for a missing teen, The Road to Heaven will bring this terrific new talent to broader audiences. P.I. Patrick Bird is a character I hope to encounter again, and again.

Linda Landrigan, Editor, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

The compressed time frame adds a propulsive element to the narrative and the author is adept at deploying plot turns at appropriate and surprising intervals, lending the story a vibrancy that keeps the reader plowing forward relentlessly.

Toronto Star

Witty and whip-smart, Stefanovich-Thomson dazzles his readers with fresh twists on every page. He dares you to keep up.

Nina Dunic, author of The Clarion

A riveting, fast-paced mystery, with aspects of noir and historical fiction thrown in for good measure. Patrick Bird is a young, cynical detective hired by a secretive rich man to track down his missing teenage daughter, Abbie. This seemingly simple plot takes place in a fascinating setting (Toronto, Ontario, mid-1965). At the time, Toronto was rapidly expanding, and youth culture was starting to challenge pious norms in a notoriously uptight city. Did Abbie run away to join the counterculture or is something more sinister afoot? Detective Bird keeps on the case, in a well-written book with multiple plot pivots that keeps everyone guessing until the end. I hope to read more books featuring Detective Bird’s adventures in Toronto-the-not-so-Good.

Nate Hendley, author of Atrocity on the Atlantic and The Beatle Bandit