• Reading age: 18

Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel, Crime Writers of Canada, The Devil's Making portrays a frontier where cultures clash on the eve of a new country's birth.

Victoria, 1869. In the ramshackle capital of what will soon become British Columbia, a few thousand settlers aspire to the values of the Victorian age on an island still dominated by a powerful mix of Indigenous people. The cautious peace is rocked when a body is discovered: Dr. McCrory, an American “doctor” who specializes in phrenology, Mesmerism, and sexual-mystical magnetation.

Chad Hobbes, recently arrived from England, is the policeman who must solve the crime. At first it seems the killer is a Tsimshian medicine man who has already been arrested. It would be easy for Hobbes to let him swing for the murder, but his own interest in a Tsimshian woman drives him to find out more. He soon discovers that everyone who knew McCrory has something to hide.

Seán Haldane was born in England, grew up in Northern Ireland, and has since lived between the UK and Canada, with long stints in Victoria, British Columbia, and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He has worked in Canada as a psychologist and neuropsychologist, mainly in memory clinics, and in the UK, most recently as head of neuropsychology in the National Health Service in East London. He continues to provide psychological assessments of criminals for the UK courts. He splits his time between houses in London, England, and Caraquet, New Brunswick. Haldane is author of many books of psychology, literary studies, and poetry, and two works of crime fiction, The Devil’s Making (winner of the 2014 Arthur Ellis Award) and Cradled on the Waves, both featuring the English policeman Chad Hobbes.

Seán Haldane's profile page