Cloud of Suspects

Colin McDonald is relentlessly rich, a property developer made good on other people’s suffering...

Maybe that’s why everybody who meets him, loathes him.

So when McDonald’s brutalised corpse is found in his Vancouver apartment, the local police have a novel problem – there are almost too many suspects, too many people who wanted him dead.

Homicide detective Jack Willows is assigned to the case, but Jack has worries of his own.

His wife has not adjusted to motherhood in the way that he anticipated, and his two older children are uncomfortably distant.

Across Vancouver, individuals and families are grappling with everyday problems, just like Jack. Single mother Jan’s tattoo business is going under and her husband has just finished a prison sentence.

He wants her back, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

Too bad for him that Jan’s interest in him has faded.

She’s head over heels in love with Sandy, even though all she knows about him is that he’s a few crucial years younger than she is and shares her interest in fast money.

But to pull off a robbery, they need somebody to drive the getaway car.

Jan’s husband Harvey is their man – and so the plot is hatched.

What Harvey and Jan don’t know is that Sandy isn’t the naive kid he seems, and that he has a nasty surprise planned for the both of them.

As Willows hunts high and low for McDonald's killer, encountering desperate and terrifying figures along the way, Jan’s plot to secure her future continues to unravel…

A must read for lovers of hard-boiled crime fiction, A Cloud of Suspects is a fast-paced tale that ingeniously weaves snapshots of Vancouver life into a compelling, unforgettable mystery.

Praise for Laurence Gough

‘Bitter, bloody, and brilliantly compulsive’ - Mail on Sunday

‘Gough’s work typically combines knotty, multi-stranded plots, picturesque villains and bit players, pungent humour, and trenchant prose’ - Times Literary Supplement

‘Gough is a real find…For anyone into hard-boiled American fiction, try heading north of the border for a treat’ - Vox

‘Gough is one of the most inventively reliable bloodsmiths in the trade. His plots and characters are strong and convincing, his mordant humour never forced, the action violent but believable’ - The Times

Laurence Gough lives with his wife and two children in Vancouver, British Columbia, the city and its scenic surroundings providing the backdrop to his novels. A playwright as well as a novelist, he has had more than fifty plays broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, while his fiction has garnered a number of awards, including Arthur Ellis Awards for Best First Novel and Best Crime Novel of the Year and an Author Award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters.