Queen of Canadian Crime Fiction

Acclaimed crime fiction writer Gail Bowen passed away on June 25.

ON EVERY AUTHOR'S JOURNEY established authors will step up with valuable advice. Their thoughtfulness can be game-changing.

In 2009, when I was working on an early draft of my first mystery novel, I booked an appointment with acclaimed Canadian crime writer Gail Bowen who was doing a stint as writer-in-residence at the Toronto Reference Library. I showed Gail a few of the opening chapters of Safe Harbor, which I’d written in third person. “Write this in first person,” she said. “This is Pat Tierney’s story, and you need to get inside her head. Tell the story from Pat’s perspective.” I followed Gail’s advice, and I felt the story coming to life as I did my rewrites. The revised Safe Harbor became a Debut Dagger finalist in 2010.

At that meeting in the library, Gail told me she would write an endorsement blurb for the novel when it was accepted for publication. I took her up on that. And she endorsed all five of my Pat Tierney mysteries.

Gail died yesterday in Regina at the age of 84. Her latest Joanne Kilbourne mystery—the twenty-fourth, which she said would mark the end of the series—will be released later this year. It has been thirty-six years since the first Joanne Kilbourne was published in 1990.

Known as the Queen of Canadian Crime Fiction, Gail’s many awards were well-deserved, among them Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel for A Colder Kind of Death in 1995. Six of the novels were adapted into six TV movies that aired on CTV.

Born and raised in Toronto, Gail moved to Saskatchewan as a graduate student, and remained there after earning her doctorate, eventually becoming the head of the English department at First Nations University in Regina. Like Gail, Joanne Kilbourne is a Saskatchewan university professor with three children.

“Regina is a city most people drive through to get somewhere else,” Gail said in Sleuth: Gail Bowen on Writing Mysteries, her 2018 handbook on crafting crime fiction. “But Regina offers me the perfect canvas on which to work…It allows me to say what I believe is true about the human condition.”

Gail’s Regina is a living, breathing, often-flawed city in need of repair. It’s not a romanticized setting like Louise Penny’s Eastern Townships. Gail did a splendid job of bringing social issues to light throughout the series. To mention a few:

Censorship in Murder at the Mendel.

Child prostitution in The Wandering Soul Murders.

Prostitution. A broad cross-section of sex workers are depicted in The Brutal Heart.

Prisoners’ rights. In Verdict in Blood, a judge leaves her estate to a half-way house for ex-cons because she feels guilty about the harsh sentences she’s handed out.

Inner-city housing. In 12 Rose Street, Gail and Joanne tackle the thorny issue of slum housing.

Indigenous issues. In several of the earlier books, Joanne has a romantic relationship with an Ojibway police officer. One scene with Alex in A Killing Spring provides the most negative portrayal of Joanne in the series. She and Alex are taking a walk when a passing motorist yells out a racial slur. Joanne’s reaction is to run across the street, distancing herself from Alex. For a long time afterwards, she is haunted by her cowardice. In the more recent books, Gail examines how city planners and developers accommodate the housing needs of Regina’s Indigenous citizens.

Feminism. Three novels directly address feminist issues: Murder at the Mendel, Burying Ariel and The Brutal Heart. Joanne would probably consider herself a moderate feminist, but she often finds herself under attack by women who consider her part of the patriarchy.

Gail’s stories were written from the heart, and Joanne’s family melodrama is a large part of their appeal. Gail's many readers, myself included, will greatly miss her.