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THE STORM MURDERS
by John Farrow
Minotaur Books, May 2015
320 pages
$25.95
ISBN: 125005768X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Winter, in the countryside near Montreal. Two members of the Sureté du Quebec are called to a remote farmhouse where they find the bodies of a couple inside. Each has been executed by a single shot to the head. But before they can investigate further the officers are gunned down, and soon scene-of-crime team is confronted by a puzzle: although it had recently snowed, there are no footprints leading away from the house.

Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars has retired but is finding himself at loose ends, wondering what to do with his newly-found free time. When he is asked by an ex-colleague to assist in the case, he is curious: it seems an FBI agent, Rand Dreher, has travelled to Quebec to look into the deaths. He reluctantly reveals that there have been other, similar cases in the US, with two common denominators: the ring fingers of the victims have been cut off, and in each case the killings followed a natural disaster. A tornado in Alabama, a flood in North Dakota, a small earthquake in California, and in New Orleans, the hurricane and flooding known as Katrina. Moment by moment the cases are becoming more puzzling. Confronted by the possibility of a cunning serial killer with a perverse modus operandi, Special Agent Dreher asks for their help in unravelling the pattern.

Intrigued by these deaths Emile Cinq-Mars accepts the task, and begins by looking into the murders that occurred in New Orleans. He is joined by his wife Sandra for what promises to be a bit of a holiday for them. But their arrival is marred by an encounter with a pair of pickpockets, and later, they find that their room has been searched. A New Orleans police detective named Pascal Dupree investigates the break-in, the local officer whom he was to contact to review the killings.

Once Cinq-Mars has arranged for their room to be changed and Sandra has settled in, he and Dupree go to a nearby bar to discuss the killings. But when he returns to the hotel, Cinq-Mars discovers that Sandra has disappeared from their room. A frantic search of the hotel fails to turn her up, but in their original room, they make a terrifying discovery: the body of a man, his hands tied behind his back. And his ring finger is missing.

John Farrow (Montreal's Trevor Ferguson) has given crime-fiction fans something they haven't had for a long time: a well-conceived, well-written locked-room puzzle mystery combined with an engaging thriller that deftly explores the depths of human evil. While the solution will strike some readers as a bit contrived, the tale itself is well told and will hold the reader's interest. Farrow is a skilled writer, and in THE STORM MURDERS he has brought his formidable talents to bear in creating an atmospheric, intense and sometimes graphic story that draws on recent history for it's narrative power.

§ Since 2005 Jim Napier's reviews and interviews have appeared in several Canadian newspapers and on various crime fiction and literary websites, including his own award-winning site, Deadly Diversions. He can be reached at jnapier@deadlydiversions.com

Reviewed by Jim Napier, August 2015

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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