“If you’re a fan of mystery books, crime novels, or novels with a local connection, then Gimli author Raye Anderson’s latest book in the Roxanne Calloway Mystery series, Had a Great Fall, might be for you. You’ll also have the perfect chance to grab your own copy as Anderson is going to be making a stop at the Gaynor Family Regional Library for an author reading on Oct. 24 at 2 p.m.

Anderson explained that the location of the story will likely remind readers of our area, but it is set in a fictitious place.

“Had a Great Fall is the fifth book in the Roxanne Calloway series. Roxanne, she used to work in the Major Crimes Unit; she’s now running the detachment at Fiskar Bay, which is a town on the shore of a big lake rather similar to Gimli, where I live. She’s on maternity leave. She has an eight-month-old baby, and she’s not due back in the office for another six to eight weeks, and it’s fall,” said Anderson.

Of course, for it to be a crime novel, there needs to be a crime, and this fall-themed book might be just the right fit to check out this time of year.

“I played a lot around the word fall in this book. (The plot starts with) two guys are out driving. One of them is Ukrainian. He has to get his Manitoba license, so they’re just trying some driving. They pass a sunflower field, and they remind him of Ukraine, and he wants to take some pictures to send back home. So, they stop to take some pictures, and they find a body in the sunflowers,” said Anderson.

Without spoiling the story, Roxanne Calloway finds out about the body through the local small-town grapevine, and since the baby is asleep and her husband is around, she heads out. Once she sees the body, she realizes that she knows who it is, and from there she finds that she needs to solve the mystery. This book is pretty hot off the presses, having been published on Aug. 28 of this year, has already become very sought after, as it made the shortlist for the Canadian awards for murder mysteries as a traditional mystery.

Something that residents should know before they grab this book is that there is some gore in this book, since it revolves around solving a murder.

Despite it having traditional murder mystery roots, Anderson feels that it is not just a murder mystery.

“It’s as much about the community as it is about Roxanne. It’s about small towns and how they react when something goes very wrong like this, and how they deal with it. There are a lot of people that Roxanne knows around where she lives who are all involved in trying to figure out what’s going on here,” said Anderson.

She also wants readers to know that Calloway isn’t one of those amazingly brilliant sleuths like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. She’s someone that the reader can relate to because she may not be the most brilliant sleuth out there, but she’s passionate about solving the mystery, doing a good job, and helping people.

Anderson said that the inspiration for this novel came from the seasonal theme of her previous books, and though she has a fall-themed book in the series already, she wanted to explore a different location.

“The one that I wrote in the fall was set in Winnipeg, in the theatre. I worked in theatre, so I wrote a theatre book, and so I’d never written a fall one in the Interlake,” she said.

The initial spark for this tale came from a drive. “It was September two years ago, and I was driving down from Gimli to Selkirk, and I passed a couple of sunflower fields. It was a year when they’d really grown. They were really tall. There were these ranks and ranks of tall, tall, beautiful sunflowers, right? And I kind of thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. How about what would happen if I put a body in the sunflower field?’ So that’s where it started,” she explained.

This is the fifth book in the Roxanne Calloway series. For readers who prefer to start at the beginning, And We Shall Have Snow is the first in the series. Anderson has six books in her catalogue, however, as she also has a Scottish mystery series called the Elspeth Laird mystery series. The first book, and only current book in that series, is The Dead Shall Inherit.

Though she’s written six books in the mystery genre, Anderson doesn’t know exactly why she enjoys writing these books so much. She does credit her more recent venture in writing to getting together with a friend to give some writing exercises a shot.

“We got together to start practicing. Just doing some creative writing exercises. And one day out of that, I sat down and wrote the first chapter of a mystery. It was one of those where the job was to write something in the style that you read a lot, and I looked at my bedside table, and there were a couple of murder mysteries,” said Anderson.

She explained that from the moment that she started writing and got the idea, she felt like she knew what to do and just went with it, and now she’s six books in.

Since Anderson has been a published author for nearly ten years, her advice to people just starting out on their artist journey is quite valuable.

“Read what you like, and write what you like, and just keep trying. I’m a pretty disciplined writer. I do work at it, and I do sit down. I put the work in. I sit down every morning (to write),” she said.

If all of this makes you curious to find out more, make sure to stop in to the Gaynor Family Regional Library at 2 p.m. on Oct. 24 to meet Anderson in person.

You can also access her books through the Gaynor Family Regional Library, where anyone from Selkirk, St. Andrews, St. Clements or Dunnottar can get a library card free of charge. 

If you want your very own copy of Anderson’s books, they are available through McNally Robinson Bookstore or Whodunit New and Used Mystery Bookstore in Winnipeg. They are on Amazon in eBook and physical book form, and Anderson will likely have a few copies at the Gaynor Family Regional Library.”

— Katelyn Boulanger Selkirk Record

Read the full review at Selkirk Record

“A private eye shotgunned in a field of sunflowers, a Mountie blunt-instrumented from behind on a Lake Winnipeg beach, a strong swimmer found floating far from shore, a shootout at the stereotypical friendly farm kitchen table — carnage among the murderous rural folk brings Sergeant Roxanne Calloway back early from mat leave.

It has something to do with the disappearance of a lifeguard escaping her strict religious parents, a ne’er-do-well family maybe using their vegetable truck to run drugs or traffic young women, a former bureaucrat and suspected hands-on misogynist likely up to no good, shady siblings and shifty cousins galore, and parenting tips on taking a baby to the OK Corral...

Raye Anderson returns to her earlier success with her fifth blood-drenched Interlake police procedural Had A Great Fall, a nifty whodunit that will do wonders for tourism in the Whiteshell.”

— Nick Martin Winnipeg Free Press

Read the full review at Winnipeg Free Press.