Maxine Benson, police chief in a small town, sets out to solve a murder in this work of crime fiction.

It's almost summer in small town Port Ainslie. Or is it? Temperatures are so far below normal that Police Chief Maxine Benson and her team are wearing sweaters. But is it cold enough to freeze the body of the man found in a ditch on the outskirts of town one morning? Maxine starts to investigate, but she is elbowed aside by the mostly-male provincial police force so she takes charge on her own. Soon she's visiting the victim's cold-hearted widow, tracking the widow's mysterious brother, and confronting the killer alone in a tract of forest. Will Maxine's skills solve this twisting tale of a case?

Escaping the pressures of big-city policing, Maxine Benson is happy to be appointed police chief in the resort town of Port Ainslie. Max's biggest challenge is to overcome skepticism at her ability to deal with major crimes—like the murder of Billy Ray Edwards. Few people mourn Billy Ray's passing. He was a bully and was also intent on derailing the biggest development project in the town's history. But murder's murder, and Max is ready to solve it on her own and prove her worth to the townspeople. And maybe even to herself.

Small-town police chief Maxine "Max" Benson is just settling into her new life when her ex appears on the scene. Apparently, he and his new young lover just happen to be visiting her area on holiday. Max left her marriage and the Toronto police to become chief in Port Ainslie, where she runs a three-person department with few problems and enjoys a different pace of life. That's all about to change when Max's ex-husband is accused of killing his young lover right in Max's own backyard. It seems that only Max's superior detection abilities can save him from an almost certain conviction. This is the third book in the Maxine Benson mystery series.

"I’d rather laugh in bad taste than cry in good taste." That’s how Josie Marshall deals with the death of her detective husband, Gabe, found naked outside their home on the beach with a bullet in his brain. Everyone calls it suicide. Josie knows it isn’t . . . but fears it could be. After all, she had provided Gabe with a motive. The clues are so strong that even Josie begins to believe Gabe shot himself. But when a horrific slaying occurs literally at her feet, she knows Gabe was murdered, and her determination to prove it carries her toward dark corners of the beach strip and exposes the darker sides of its residents. Fending off her fears with humour and outrage, she encounters a drug-crazed drifter, an organized-crime boss with romance on his mind, a woman with a murderous past and a pervert who’s been frequenting her garden shed. When a chance remark leads Josie to the astonishing truth of Gabe’s death, her story takes a shocking turn that no one could have seen coming.

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This Edgar Award-winning debut kicks off the crime series—and basis for the Fox TV and Hulu series Murder in a Small Town—set along Canada’s Sunshine Coast. To Karl Alberg, the coastal town of Sechelt, just north of Vancouver, looks like the perfect place to soothe a psyche that’s been battered by big-city police work. Bees buzz among the roses, and the local librarian is attractive, intriguing, and unattached. Perhaps he has at last come in from the cold. But sunny towns can conceal a lot of secrets—some of them bleak enough to make a man yearn for some nice straightforward urban crime. In 1986 L.R. Wright’s The Suspect became the first Canadian novel to win an Edgar award, beating out titles by Ruth Rendell and Jonathan Kellerman. It went on to become a cult favorite among mystery fans, who prized its delicately etched sense of melancholy and intriguing character studies of the cop, his quarry, and the enigmatic librarian who proves an unlikely bridge between the two.