Paul Weiss's Reviews > Turning Secrets

“Most jumpers aim to land on their head since it’s the best way to ensure a fatal end. This girl took a flat dive.”

Something about the apparent suicide of a teenage runaway and new single mother at an isolated construction site just isn’t passing Kala Stonechild’s sniff test. As she begins the process of putting together the timeline of her final days in order to come to a final determination as to whether her death was murder or suicide, Stonechild finds herself pitted against the misogyny of her colleagues, the uncertainty of a team member leaking vital investigative information to the media, loan sharking and extortion, financial corruption and human trafficking. And to put the first layer of icing on a very nasty cake, Stonechild’s niece, Dawn, (against the wishes and advice of her mother and her aunt) is surreptitiously meeting with her father, out on early parole and living rough in the woods near Stonechild’s home. The final layer comes when Dawn’s friend, Vanessa, finds herself in an inescapable relationship with an older man, in fact a pimp and human trafficker, who has set his sights on Dawn as his next victim.

The quality and credibility of the development of her characters’ individual story lines and how those stories mesh so seamlessly with the sixth in a series of brilliant, gripping police procedurals is, in a word, awesome. I’m definitely looking forward to what I fear may be the final book in the series, CLOSING TIME. That said, hope springs eternal! Kudos to a skilled Canadian author who definitely deserves space on the shelves of mystery, suspense thriller and police procedural fans.

Paul Weiss