Stray Bullets

Robert Rotenberg's compelling tale, Stray Bullets, is the story of a spontaneous shooting at a Toronto donut franchise, a firefight that leaves a four-year-old boy dead and a crucial eyewitness, an illegal alien, vanished into the night. Ari Greene, the officer in charge of the Tim Hortons shooting struggles to separate the facts of the case from the many conflicting eyewitness accounts. How many shots were fired, and from how many guns? Which witnesses-if any-are reliable? And how to go about tracking down the shooter, who melted into the cold November darkness? Greene soon finds that there are people involved in the case with other agendas than solving the crime. He locks horns first with Nancy Parish, a defense attorney for one of the suspects, who's clearly in over her head. Then he must also do battle with Ralph Armitage, an arrogant Crown Attorney who's anxious to exploit the case to further his own career. For his part, Greene only wants to bring a killer to justice and give the grieving parents of the young victim some solace. Not as easy as it sounds in the murky world of those who assign little value to human life, and all too much to personal gain.