Undercut

"THE BODY WAS SLUMPED over the desk. Blood ran like a crimson ribbon down both sides of the neck from a tear in the scalp somewhere in the occipital region above the hairline. You couldn’t see the wound, and you couldn’t tell that the skull was crushed beneath the ruptured skin..."

So begins Undercut, a murder mystery set in east-end Toronto. A young geologist, Chris Andrews, has been murdered in his own office, and homicide detective Harry Stark, who has been wrestling with demons of his own, including the accidental shooting of a young witness at the scene of a robbery, is assigned to the case.

A cast of varied characters peoples this novel, from the former Canadian sailor named Chilly who is found with the murdered man’s wallet, to the slimy stock manipulator Martineri, to Andrews’ wife, associates and friends. All of them are suspects in this well-structured whodunit with a wonderfully surprising solution.