Hazel Micallef Mystery

The first homicide that Canadian Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, acting chief of the Port Dundas police, has had to investigate in almost three years is that of cancer patient Delia Chandler, a woman who once had an affair with Hazel's father. When a few days later, and three hundred kilometers away, the mutilated body of an multiple sclerosis sufferer is found, painted in Chandler's blood, Micallef realizes that someone is killing the terminally ill, and not for mercy's sake. Hobbled by a bad back and a skeptical police bureaucracy, Inspector Micallef takes it upon herself to coordinate a nationwide manhunt for the killer; a man, she soon learns, who can save a life as dramatically as he can end one-a man with God on his mind, grief in his heart, and a desperate need to kill.

Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is having a bad year. After major back surgery, she moves into her ex-husband's home to be cared for by his new wife. As if that weren't enough to cope with, her octogenarian mother is insisting that Hazel end her dependence on painkillers-an insistence that takes the form of secretly flushing Hazel's stash down the toilet. It's almost a relief when Hazel gets a call about a body found in one of the lakes near Port Dundas. But what raises the hair on the back of her neck is that the local paper has just published the first installment of a serialized story featuring such a scenario. Even before they head out to the lake, she and Detective Constable James Wingate know they are being played. But who is pulling their strings and why are not clear, nor is what they find at the lake at all what they expected. This is no simple drowning accident or even a straightforward murder. It's Micallef herself who is snared, caught up in a cryptic game being played by a maven of the art of deception.

Stinging deaths aren't uncommon in the summertime, but when Henry Wiest turns up stung to death at an Indian reservation, Detective Hazel Micallef senses not all is as it seems. And when it turns out the 'bee was a diabolical teenaged girl on a murder spree with a strange weapon, a dark and twisted crime begins to slowly emerge. The questions, contradictions, and bodies begin to mount, as two separate police forces struggle to work together to save the soul of Westmuir County