Zoologist Cordi O’Callaghan is at it again, tracking a murderer on her own turf – a biology research station on a remote barrier island off the eastern coast of the United States.  Initially there to record some birdsong for her latest zoological studies, Cordi winds up in the midst of a nightmare when one of the researchers is found dead, as a hurricane races up the eastern seaboard and strands them all on the island. Cordi sets out to investigate the troubling circumstances of the death and gets a crash course on how to survive the ire of a murderer and the eccentricities of the researchers and their work. The plot twists and turns are as varied as the twisty roads on the island, but Cordi doesn’t see the surprising resolution to the mystery until she nearly dies solving it. Dundurn Group. 2014. Available online: Chapters, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com (U.S.)  $11.99

ISBN:978-1-4597-0818-1

    Please watch my 80 second Book Trailer for DYING FOR MURDER on YOUTUBE 

When zoology professor Cordi O’Callaghan reluctantly accepts an invitation to be a lecturer aboard the Susannah Moody, a vessel ferrying tourists through the Arctic, she figures it will be a breeze. Seasickness aside Cordi becomes entangled in the deaths of 2 of her fellow passengers, both members of a closeknit fiction writing group. Ruled accidental Cordi has a niggling feeling that  it is anything but, but she lacks evidence and credibility, according to Martha Bathgate and Duncan McPherson, her sometimes reluctant sidekicks who try to keep Cordi grounded.

When Cordi returns home she takes up the trail and stirs up a hornet’s nest of lies, intrigue, jealousy and greed as she questions potential murderers, one of whom takes offence and starts stalking Cordi. Being stranded on the pack ice, a harrowing trip in an airplane and hot air balloon and a mysterious fire all add to the aura of excitement that swirls around Cordi as she nails down a murderer.

Publisher: Dundurn Group. 2010

ISBN:978-1-55488-426-1

Forever Dead began as an image in my head. I was visiting Vancouver and had some time to walk along the shores of the Capilano River. It was fall I think because there wasn’t much water and I remember thinking that the rapids looked like little miniatures. I stepped from boulder to boulder until I was in the middle of these little guys and sat down on a boulder and watched the water running between two rocks and then kicking up miniature standing waves. I imagined a little canoe caught in grip of the current trying to avoid the miniature keeper, the shelf, the little whirlpool and wondered what sort of mystery could be woven out of the wilderness. At that point my daydream was shattered by the sound of a chainsaw and suddenly I had my mystery. But it took the writing of it to discover the final twist.

Forever Dead

2007 Dundurn Group

ISBN  978-1-55002-705-1

Price: $11.99

This is the first Cordi O’Callaghan Mystery