As a child Joanne was friends with Sally Love and her parents, but the friendship languished after Sally’s father died and she moved away, eventually becoming a very controversial artist. When the Mendel Gallery opens an exhibition of Sally’s work, Joanne is eager to attend and to renew their friendship. But it’s not so easy being Sally’s friend anymore, and soon Joanne finds herself ensnared in a web of intrigue and violence. When the director of a local private gallery is brutally murdered, Joanne finds that the past she and Sally share was far more complicated, and far more sordid, than she had realized.
GAIL BOWEN was an author, playwright, and educator best known for the acclaimed Joanne Kilbourn mystery series, spanning more than three decades and including twenty-four novels. The first Joanne Kilbourn mystery, Deadly Appearances (1990), was nominated for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award and A Colder Kind of Death (1994) won the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel. In 2018, Bowen was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit and the Grand Master Award of Crime Writers of Canada. In 2009, she received the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada, and in 2008, Reader's Digest named Bowen Canada's Best Mystery Novelist. Her plays have been produced across Canada and on CBC Radio. She was associate professor of English at First Nations University of Canada before retiring from teaching. Bowen lived in Regina, Saskatchewan. www.gailbowen.com.