A Victim of Convenience

Michael Payne is the City of Edmonton archivist and the co-author of A
Narrative History of Fort Dunvegan.

With relatively little fanfare, John Ballem has emerged as one of
Canada’s best-selling and most prolific authors of detective fiction.
His background as a lawyer and oil field entrepreneur is somewhat
unusual, and in some circles he remains best known as the author of the
standard legal textbook The Oil and Gas Lease in Canada. He has used
this professional experience and expertise as the basis for 12 novels.

Like most of Ballem’s other work, this book is set in Calgary and the
oil and gas business is central to the plot. A serial killer is on the
loose in the city and his mutilated victims keep appearing with
distressing regularity. Chris Crane, a police officer with a background
in law and oil investment, is assigned to the case. The killer begins
sending cryptic messages to Crane, and what starts out as a relatively
conventional police investigation soon becomes a personal battle of
wits.

The interesting hook for readers is the interplay of police procedure
and forensics with Crane’s knowledge of the intricacies of oil and gas
investment. One of the victims is a prominent energy lawyer who was
working on a complicated investment deal with enormous implications for
the stock market. Her death has financial implications that reverberate
throughout the investment community, but it takes someone with Crane’s
unusual background to see who might benefit from her death.

A Victim of Convenience leaves the reader feeling that Chris Crane may
well join Bill Crawford as one of Ballem’s enduring detective
creations.