Raw Bone by Scott Thornley (MacNeice Mysteries #3)
English | 2015 | Mystery & Thriller | 2.1 MB
In the third novel of Scott Thornley’s much-praised MacNeice mystery series, Detective Superintendent MacNeice’s life—and heart—are in serious danger.
On a morning with just a hint of spring in the air, the body of a young woman is found trapped in the ice of Cootes Paradise on Dundurn Bay. She has no piercings or tattoos or nail polish, and is as pristine as if she’d stepped out of a more innocent time. The next day at dawn, in Gage Park in the heart of the city, a homeless man is woken by the sound of squeaking wagon wheels and spots someone abandoning what looks like a bundle of silvery garbage in the middle of a grassy lawn. Then he realizes that the bundle is actually a man, gagged and duct-taped to the wagon but still alive. It turns out that the man is booby-trapped, rigged to blow as soon as the emergency personnel attempt to cut him loose. And MacNeice is faced with the gruesome murder of another apparently innocent victim, a blameless and bland high-school teacher and devoted single father whom it seems, nobody could summon the energy to hate.
The investigations lead MacNeice and his team into the bars and rooming houses of Dundurn, where Irish immigrants intersect with mercenaries and criminal gambling racketeers. Soon MacNeice himself is a target, along with the first woman he has allowed himself to touch since his wife died. And then he discovers that the worst crime of all is one hidden in the secret life of that oh-so-normal high school teacher.