MEMORIES ARE MURDER

Gary Myers, who is a zoologist and Belle Palmer’s high school boyfriend, is studying the behavior of elk released in the nearby wilderness. When his partner arrives, Gary is found drowned near his research camp. Did he fall and hit his head, or did a more sinister event occur? The partner and Belle start to compile Gary’s research. Gary’s documents are not complete and someone has broken into his cottage, taking a camera and laptop. When Gary’s partner is poisoned by carbon monoxide and Belle nearly dies and hospital deaths confirm she had been given a date-rape drug, they realize that these are no accidents. A clipping of Gary's about poisoning on remote reserves leads Belle to revisit the place of Gary’s demise to collect water samples. Seconds after setting off, they are pursued at gunpoint. In a rapidly escalating and dramatic denouement, they must paddle into the deep bush, with no way back.

Northern Ontario realtor Belle Palmer is showing the lakefront mansion of a prominent businesswoman when she discovers the lady strangled in her bathtub. Could this third break-and-enter death reveal a serial killer at large in the Nickel Capital? The woman’s only child, a precocious 12-year-old named Micro, comes to stay with Belle's neighbors and wins her heart. Then after an argument, the boy disappears, riding off into the cold September night on his bicycle. His computer shows a cryptic correspondence that sends the police checking pedophile registers as an Amber Alert is issued. Racing against time as fall temperatures plummet, Belle hooks up with a bumbling PI and joins the search. Belle must flee into the bush, where she has every chance of becoming lost and disoriented, chased by murderers who will stop at nothing to protect a multi-million-dollar criminal empire.

For Maddie Temple, a literature professor at a small Michigan university, the new school year gets off to a rocky start, with the death of a student (who plummeted from one of the library's top floors). Then a top university administrator dies under suspicious circumstances, with the disliked coordinator of the English department becoming the prime suspect. Allin, author of the popular Belle Palmer series, has written a novel that's about as British cozy as it's possible for a book to be without actually being British. It stars a professor who is a fan of Sherlock Holmes and whose father was a policeman; it's set in and around a university; and its cast is mostly made up of students and faculty. Literary references abound, from Dickens to Frank Norris to Truman Capote. It's a very gentle story, told at an unhurried pace, and readers who like to settle into a comfy chair with a nice cup of well-sugared tea will be in seventh heaven.

BUSH POODLES ARE MURDER

Realtor Belle Palmer turns reluctant babysitter for a spoiled mini-poodle when her friend Miriam MacDonald is accused of murdering her lover, a sleazy investment counselor with a thousand enemies. Meanwhile, a stalker has Belle watching her back in the Northern Ontario bush she calls home. Will she find the killer before a bullet finds her?

RendezVous Press, 2003 $12.95 CDN $10.95 US

BLACKFLIES ARE MURDER

Summer in Northern Ontario, where everyone is bear bait, even the bears. Gunshots chase Belle Palmer from quiet forest paths. Then on her remote lakeside road, the savage murder of a neighbour puts her on guard against two-footed killers.Does the answer lie in the woods? In the alleys of the Nickel Capital? Or in the blackrock moonscape of an ecological disaster area? Belle searches for a truth which may destroy more lives.

RendezVous Press, 2002 $12.95 CDN $10.95 US

NORTHERN WINTERS ARE MURDER

Another winter descends in peaceupon the lake where realtor Belle Palmer lives with her dog and classic films. But the tranquillity is tragically disturbed when a friend is lost in a freak snowmobile accident on an isolated lake. Or so it seems.

Belle suspects foul play, but a motive for the murder of such a fine young man is not obvious. Belle, determined to find the truth, is nevertheless shocked when she discovers what twisted roots underlie this savage crime.

RendezVous Press, 2002 $12.95 CDN $10.95 US