Patrick Bird Mystery

A gripping noir mystery introducing artless young detective Patrick Bird, set in Toronto's Parkdale during the tumultuous '60s. Patrick Bird, police academy burnout turned PI, works divorce cases, using his camera to catch the unfaithful and the lonely looking for love in rented rooms. But his easy routine is shattered by a new case involving a missing girl. Sixteen-year-old Abbie Linklater hasn't been home for two days. Her stepmother believes Abbie's getting an abortion. Her twin brother thinks she's studying at the library. Her best friend couldn't care less. Her father has no idea; he just wants her home without involving the police. Before the sun sets on the first day of his investigation, as Bird roams the streets of Toronto looking for the runaway, he's caught a drifter prowling in the Linklaters' backyard, stumbled into a creepy church with a belligerent minister, sparred with the client, been hit by a car, and discovered some loose ends in a bank robbery gone wrong a decade earlier. And that's before he finds the body.

A missing tenant, an irate mother–in–law, and a killer hiding in a Toronto rooming house-out–of–work PI Patrick Bird is back in business. Patrick Bird thought he was helping his mother–in–law collect back rent from a deadbeat tenant at her Ossington Avenue rooming house, not starting a new investigation. But when he discovers Jack Turner's third–floor darkroom is demolished and the photographer is missing, the other tenants come under scrutiny: Mr. Yusuf, the international student training to be a doctor; Danny Blinken, the shifty taxi driver; and Shirley Burton, the young nurse far from home. As Bird investigates, he uncovers information about a former tenant, James Earl Ray, who had assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just weeks earlier and had been hiding out in a room on the second floor.