Birds That Stay

Ann Lambert

Feb 2019 · A Russell and Leduc Mystery Book 1 · Second Story Press

About this ebook

As winter approaches a small village in the Laurentians, north of Montreal, a reclusive older woman is found strangled outside her home. Roméo Leduc, the enigmatic Chief Inspector for Homicide, is one day away from his first vacation in years but reluctantly answers the call on the case.
Marie Russell did not know her elderly neighbour, and she does not expect to become embroiled in solving her murder. Like most people in her sleepy town, Marie values the quiet months after tourists and cottagers leave. But when a startling clue links the crime to a terrible incident that happened on Marie’s suburban Montreal street in the 1970s, Marie becomes an inadvertent detective. As Marie and Roméo combine wits to find the killer, they are forced to face demons from their own pasts as they confront a case where no one and nothing is really as it seems.

Ratings and reviews

Chief Inspector for Homicide, Romeo Leduc, is called to investigate when an elderly woman is found strangled and frozen in her yard. Leduc s scheduled to start his vacation the next day, so he's reluctant to take on a new case .. but he reluctantly does his job. There have been a series of robberies, maybe this s a robbery gone bad. Or it could be a violent hate crime. Mary Russell lives next door to the victim and her Alzheimer-suffering mother unintentionally says something out of the blue .. something that might link to the death of her neighbor. Marie and Romeo wind up working in tandem when they discover that the murder may have links even further back ... to the end of WW2. This debut novel follows them from today to yesterday to yesteryear causing each of them to face their own pasts. There are deeply hidden secrets and who can they trust when no one is who they seem to be? Although slow paced, this is a nice mystery with likeable characters. My one complaint is that french words / phrases are sprinkled throughout the story and having to stop and look them up on the computer took away the continuity of the story for me. Many thanks to the author / Second Story Press / Netgalley for the digital copy of this crime fiction. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

About the author

Ann Lambert has been writing and directing for the stage for thirty-five years. Several of her plays, including The Wall, Parallel Lines, Very Heaven, The Mary Project and Two Short Women have been performed in theatres in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. She has been a teacher of English literature at Dawson College for almost twenty-eight years in Montreal, Quebec, where she makes her home.