The cutthroat world of professional hockey is even more dangerous off the ice in the original detective thriller that inspired the new Global TV series Private Eyes.

Brad Shade has been just about everywhere hockey is played. He has ridden the buses in the minors, shared dressing rooms with the legends of the game, closed bars with guys destined for the Hall of Fame, and dropped the gloves with journeymen like himself who'll never get near it. And even though he's retired after fourteen years of bouncing around the league with more losses than wins and his net worth eroding, he's still living out of a suitcase and still taking numbers. That's his day job—scout for L.A., where someone in management owes him a favour from his playing days.     
     But when the brutally murdered body of coaching legend Red Hanratty turns up in the parking lot after an old-timers charity game (Shade goes scoreless, again), Shade's job of scouting the local phenom starts to overlap with investigating the killing of the kid's grizzled old coach.     
     When the killer goes after Shade's girlfriend, he finds out that guys don't stay in the league because they're good—they stick around because they're smart enough to know what needs to get done, and just ornery enough to actually do it.     
     From small-town rinks to the draft tables in the big league, G.B. Joyce introduces us to a character Canadians already love—the fourth-liner with a self-deprecating sense of humour and an oversized will to win—and weaves a story out of strands of resentment, greed, and fear that span generations and build to a surprising, thrilling conclusion.

Gare Joyce has written about sports for over thirty years, winning four National Magazine Awards and landing on The Best American Sports Writing notable list seven times. Joyce is the author of eleven books, including Sidney Crosby: Taking the Game by Storm and The Devil And Bobby Hull. He is a senior writer with Sportsnet and was previously a hockey columnist for The Globe and Mail and a staff feature writer for ESPN The Magazine and espn.com. Joyce lives in Toronto, seven subway stops from the Air Canada Centre.

Gare Joyce's profile page

"One of the great 'insider' fictions of the professional hockey world. Funny and full of dirty fights both on and off the ice, it delivers an astringent look into big league machinations and the human costs of playing the game." —Andrew Pyper, author of The Guardians and The Damned 
"Gare Joyce writes with guts and gusto. . . . Cunning, funny, and powerful." —Robert Rotenberg, author of The Guilty Plea and Stranglehold

"G.B. Joyce is Gare Joyce, one of Canada's finest sportswriters, an award-winner who knows how to tell a tale, which makes The Code simply terrific. . . . Joyce takes us on a brief, witty and devilishly clever trip. . . . The writing and characters are so very, very good. There's plenty of behind-the-lines chat to amuse the hockey fans, but even if, like me, you have never watched a puck, you will find Brad Shade and The Code good to the final paragraph. " —The Globe and Mail

"A great read for anyone who loves hockey." —The Gazette (Montreal)

"Hockey's inherently gothic and operatic qualities make an ideal backdrop for murder, and Joyce . . . exploits them with verve. . . . Here's hoping [Brad Shade's] next shift is as entertaining as his first." —Maclean's
"Buy the book." —NOW Magazine

"A lively crime novel." —Ottawa Citizen
"The evocation of hockey's atmosphere has never been so expertly done in fiction." —Toronto Star

"I enjoyed the book very much and recommend it highly." —Brian Burke, former president and general manager, Toronto Maple Leafs

"One of this continent's master craftsmen of sporting prose. . . as fine a writer as can be found in any field." —Sports Illustrated

"This thriller has enough juice to satisfy those who've never been to a rink." —Library Journal
"[Joyce's] knowledgeable, engagingly cynical perspective on hockey should prove compelling even for those readers with no interest in the sport." —Publishers Weekly

“Part CSI, part L.A. Law, part Hockey Night in Canada—Gare Joyce deserves a championship ring for his uncanny portrayal of Brad Shade, the earthy, educated hockey scout sleuth. This is sports writing, crime writing, and just plain writing as good as it gets.” —Roy MacGregor, author of Wayne Gretzky’s Ghost

From the Paperback edition.