"A literary joyride." --Louise Penny, New York Times bestselling
author of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels
More than ten years after The Foulest Things, murder and mayhem
return to Ottawa in the highly-anticipated next installment of Amy
Tector's acclaimed Dominion Archives Mystery series.
It's a stormy summer day when Ottawa coroner Dr. Cate Spencer is called
to the scene of an alleged suicide. Inside a narrow vault in the
Dominion Archives' nitrate film storage facility--kept separate from the
rest of the collection due to its dangerous combustibility--officers
pressure Cate to rule the death a suicide. When parts of the scene don't
add up and a deliberately set spark threatens her life, Cate suspects
that this death might be a murder.
Cate's tough façade masks a deep compassion for the victims she
examines. Whether she's looking for answers because of her dedication to
justice or to distract herself from anguish over her brother's recent
death, her inquiries plunge her into a world of military secrets,
contentious Indigenous protests, and a seventy-year-old mystery with
deadly implications. Will Cate manage to pull herself away from her
scotch and grief to expose an explosive historic secret and solve a
murder the police doubt even exists?