Murders and disappearances in one building … but are they connected?

Hollis Grant has fashioned a new life for herself with a foster child and a job as resident super of an eight-storey apartment building with a split personality. Hollis finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation when a tenant, a woman working for an escort agency, is murdered. The detective in charge is Rhona Simpson, with whom Hollis has crossed swords in the past. Rhona, deeply shaken by a report on racial and sexual violence against Native girls and women, is wrestling with an identity crisis as she comes to terms with her own Native heritage.

Hollis’s life is further complicated by the disappearance of Mary, a First Nations tenant who leaves a niece behind and a message asking Hollis to care for her. Hollis gives herself 24 hours to locate Mary, but her search for the woman places her in grave danger. Will Hollis end up as yet another victim?

Joan Boswell was born in Toronto and grew up in Ottawa, Edmonton, Oakville and Halifax. She received her BA from the University of New Brunswick, married and moved to the Northern Quebec bush. After two years she and her husband relocated to London, Ontario, where she attended Teachers’ College and taught on the Six Nations Oneida Indian Reserve. Moving to Ottawa, she obtained an MA in Canadian Studies from Carleton University and a PhD from the University of Ottawa. Her thesis grew out of her experience with and interest in the Six Nations. During her many years in academia she won several prizes as well as a Ford Foundation Fellowship, and Canada Council grants. These enabled her to continue her studies and pay for sitters to care for her four sons who grew up hating the sound of the typewriter. Throughout her life, she has painted and eventually the compulsion to improve and spend more time being creative overwhelmed her and she returned to the University of Ottawa to complete the course work for a BFA. After ten solo shows and four posters produced by Posters International, she again switched her focus. This time writing was the attraction. She attended the Humber School of Writing and took a Humber College Correspondence Course with Isabel Huggin. As a writer, Joan has had work published in magazines and anthologies in Canada and the United States. As a member of the Ladies’ Killing Circle, she has had stories in each of their six books: The Ladies’ Killing Circle, Cottage Country Killers, Menopause Is Murder, Fit to Die, Bone Dance and When Boomers Go Bad. She has also co-edited the last three books. In 2000, she won the $10,000 Toronto Sunday Star short story contest. Cut Off His Tale was her first novel. The second in the Hollis Grant series, Cut to the Quick, followed in 2007, and the third, Cut to the Chase, in 2009.

Joan Boswell's profile page

In this complicated but plausible situation, a few people are not what they seem, of course. But Grant and Simpson, growing to trust and respect each other, are very real and their story is engrossing.

Star Phoenix

…the book stands out in its genre for tackling the unfamiliar subject of Canadian racial attitudes.

Publishers Weekly

Through 16 separate stories, he paints a distinctly Canadian picture of Lake Superior’s north shore, telling tales of the land and the people who inhabit it.

Canadian Geographic