Winter of Secrets

The week of Christmas, I can think of no better interview to feature than this one with Vicki Delany on her new book, Winter of Secrets. As described at Delany’s website: “Siblings Wendy and Jason Wyatt-Yarmouth and their friends are in the peaceful mountain town of Trafalgar, B.C. enjoying a two-week vacation of skiing, drinking, drugs, and sex. Tragedy strikes the group of privileged students when two of the group crash through the ice into the frozen river.It’s Christmas Eve and the snowstorm of the decade has settled over the peaceful mountain town of Trafalgar, B.C. Constables Smith and Evans have a busy shift, attending fender-benders, tumbling pedestrians, and Christmas tree fires. At the stroke of midnight, they arrive at the scene of a car accident: a vehicle has gone off the snowy road into the icy river. An accident, agree police, coroner, medics. But when the autopsy reveals a shocking secret, Constable Molly Smith and Sergeant John Winters are plunged into the world of sexual predators, recreational drugs, privilege, and high-living.”

Winter of Secrets is the third installment ” featuring Constable Smith, Sergeant Winters, and the town in the shadow of the glacier, Trafalgar, British Columbia.”

A first chapter PDF of the book can be found here.

Tim O’Shea: Your website includes the phrase: “Canadian Author of Mystery Novels and Suspense Novels”. Do try to set all your novels in Canada? And in terms of writing, do you think your Canadian background/experience allows your novels to have a perspective and nuances that readers cannot get from non-Canadian writers?

Vicki Delany: I do set all my books in Canada. About all I can say I bring to my books is a Canadian perspective on Canada. And that’s a good thing. We in Canada are overshadowed so much by our so-much-larger neighbours that it can be difficult to get our stories told. Even Canadian publishers sometimes prefer books set in the U.S. because they think that has greater market appeal. Toronto is often a stand-in in movies and TV shows for places such as New York, but it is not often allowed to be itself. Canada and the U.S. are alike in many ways, but there are significant differences also and I think everyone benefits from knowing how the rest of the world works. For example, my police officers in the Constable Molly Smith series are not allowed to carry their guns when out of uniform so they will not walk out of a restaurant into a gun battle or some such. Gold Digger is set in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, which was about as far from a Wild West town as you can get; the North-West Mounted Police being firmly in charge. That sort of thing, and other nuances, are why I think it’s valuable for Canadian people to set their books in Canada.

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