A Cold White Sun

June 10, 2013
In Delany’s solid sixth Constable Molly Smith mystery, Molly and Det. Sgt. John Winters struggle to discover why an unseen sniper shot Cathy Lindsay—a Trafalgar, British Columbia, high school teacher—as she was out skiing. On the surface, Cathy was a perfectly unremarkable person. On closer examination, the police discover that her personal life was a baroque mess of infidelity and unrequited crushes; they can’t even rule out the possibility that some overwrought, entitled student (or parent) killed her after receiving a bad grade. Most disturbing is the possibility that Cathy was not personally targeted, that her life can offer no insight into her death, and that the police are helpless to prevent her murderer from striking again. The final resolution owes less to sleuthing than to simple human flaws of a realistic but dramatically unsatisfying sort, but the author’s quietly competent sketch of police work in a small town will keep readers turning the pages.

August 1, 2013

The lack of motive for a high school teacher's murder puzzles British Columbia officers Sergeant John Winters and Constable Molly Smith on their sixth case (after Among the Departed).

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013
Cathy Lindsay, a married high-school English teacher with two children, seems an unlikely target for a sniper's bullet. The murder frightens people in the town of Trafalgar, British Columbia, and flummoxes Sergeant John Winters until he learns that the victim was enamored of a colleague, science teacher Mark Hamilton, an Afghanistan vet, and that her husband has a mistress in Victoria, B.C. Recognizing the potential of Constable Molly Smith, despite her occasional rookie mistakes, Winters reaches down into the ranks to include her in the investigation. Molly, meanwhile, is testing the relationship with her boyfriend, Canadian Mountie Adam Tocek, and chafing about her former-flower-child mother, widowed two years earlier. The intuitive Winters, taking advantage of a careful killer's one mistake, finally puts an end to the puzzle in this sixth entry in the Molly Smith series, recently optioned for Canadian television. Another brisk whodunit in a beautiful western Canadian setting with an appealing protagonist in Molly, whose personal life gets as much attention as her professional one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)