Acts of Murder

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Followers of L.R. Wright’s superlative Karl Alberg mystery series will
recall that in the seventh novel (Mother Love, 1995), Alberg and his
longtime lover, librarian Cassandra Mitchell, became engaged. In Acts of
Murder, the ninth, they are married. There are major developments in the
lives of other regulars, too; this makes it advisable for those who have
not yet discovered these terrific, international-award-winning
psychological suspense novels to start at the beginning with The Suspect
(1985). Readers will be rewarded with impressive writing and well-told
tales of memorable people, be they victim or villain, cunning, gullible,
or criminally deranged.

Acts of Murder is an engrossing story involving a demented murderer,
but readers who enjoy the finely drawn local color of British
Columbia’s Sunshine Coast may find the ending a bit unsettling. After
Alberg and his new (female) sergeant have solved a series of ghastly
killings, he gives the distinct impression that he may retire and go
into the private eye business on the mean streets of Vancouver. This
reader hopes that he will stay in Sechelt a bit longer.