The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: books

  • Murder Ballads and Alice Munro’s “Open Secrets”

    I’m initially veering a little off topic again, the topic being Canadian women’s crime fiction, to speculate about an intriguing musical genre that makes an odd appearance in Alice Munro’s story “Open Secrets.” A murder ballad is a sung story about violent death and its aftermath, including the execution of the murderer. Some of my…

  • Charlotte Brontë and Crime Fiction

    I’ll be teaching Jane Eyre in a few weeks, so I just went hunting for my old notes from studying, writing about, and–so I thought–teaching the novel. I had a distinct recollection of teaching it once, when I covered for a Victorian fiction professor who was on leave. I took over in late January, and…

  • Jean Paetkau’s Victoria-Set Breakwater Series

    My Christmas holiday reading has been the second book in local indie writer Jean Paetkau’s Breakwater series, which opened with Blood on the Breakwater last year. In Victoria it was a bestseller, and the author did a tremendous job promoting her self-published work. That must be one of the most onerous tasks for a writer…