“Publishing popular genre fiction, like mysteries, when you only have a population of thirty million, (compared to the U.S's 300 million), is a more "perilous trade" than Roy MacSkimming meant by the title of his 2003 history of CanLit– at least so many Canadian publishers would have us believe.  Yet Norway, a country of just under six million people, and Sweden, with just under nine million, have both produced a couple of generations of mystery writers who are not only popular in their own countries; in translation their books routinely make the North American and British bestseller lists. Combined, they have a  domestic market hald the size of ours, so why aren't a bunch of Canadian mystery writers up there in bold print on those lists? It certainly isn't for lack of talent.  

Undaunted, a few publishers like Signature Editions and Turnstone Press under its Ravenstone imprint, keep tooling up and going to the gunfight.  Interestingly, Signature and Turnstone are both based in Winnipeg, making it the "murder mystery capital of Canada"; a nicer distinction than being the murder capital of Canada.  Most of the murders in their novels do not take place in Winnipeg.  

Judith Alguire is The Woman I Most Want to Meet Wearing a Trench Coat in a Bar at Midnight.  She already has an impressive CV; a past board member of the Kingston Whig-Standard, published in The Malahat Review and Harrowsmith, recently retired from a career in nursing and she's not on track to become Canada's Agatha Christie.  Signature has published five of her Rudley Mysteries: Pleasantly Dead, The Pumpkin Murders, A Most Unpleasant Wedding, Peril at the Pleasant, and most recently, Many Unpleasant Returns, all set at the Pleasant Inn in Ontario's cottage country north of Toronto. 

Presided over by the irascible Trevor Rudley and his patent wife Margaret, the Pleasant is the kind of ideal venue for murder Dame Agatha always imagined; idyllic yet isolated, filled with eccentrics, local and imported, any one of whom might be of a homicidal turn of mind.  Local cops are likable guys working on a big rural beat and Alguire doesn't ovrburden readers with irrelevant detail about their personal lives; just enough to make them interesting.  A supporting cast of the Inn's regular clients and employees is used to maximum effect.  The two guys who run the kitchen are gay and there are sundry other echoes of Louise Penny's successful Cheif Inspector Gamache Series set in Quebec, but several of Penny's books have been improbably plotted, while Alguire's are as tight-seamed as a good boat.  

In Peril at the Pleasant, Trevor's wife inveigles him into a canoe trip while the cops are searching the area for a suspect who might be responsible for a number of apparently random muders.  Many Unpleasant Returns is a Christmas story like Die Hard is a Christmas movie; the demise or near-demise of guests trapped by a storm is heralded by the appearance of tiny but sinister Santa dolls, a nice festive touch.  I'm going back for the previous books and waiting for the next.  ”

— John Moore SubTerrain