Winner of the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel
In 1840, the theatre world in London is shocked by the brutal killing of one of its youngest and most successful entrepreneurs, bludgeoned in his house. The discovery of a contentious theatre contract, a collection of promissory notes and a walking stick, its bloodied ivory head in the shape of a dog, are the only leads. Inspector Owen Endersby, of the recently formed London Detective Police Force, is called upon to apprehend the culprit before Christmas Eve. The inspector has six days to chart the by-ways of the Criminal Mentality. The case soon involves street vendors, downstairs servants, money lenders and the greatest performers of the stage. Who had motive to batter the young man to death? Without the techniques of the modern-day detective, Inspector Endersby must root out the villain any way he can by disguise, break-and-enter, bribery, mail tampering and physical force.

Jon Redfern was born and raised in Alberta. He has been a free-lance journalist for both the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, a story editor for the CBC and a children’s playwright. Since 1989 his short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals including Grain, Event and Descant. When Jon Redfern was a graduate student at the University of Toronto he became fascinated by a relatively unexplored period of theatre history. His subsequent thesis on the operas and melodramas of London’s great theatres, and the producers of these entertainments, became the basis for his latest detective novel, Trumpets Sound No More. Jon’s first novel, The Boy Must Die, won the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel in Canada for 2002. Since that time, Jon has been researching and writing, teaching English as a professor at Centennial College in Toronto, serving for two years as the active Vice President, Toronto Chapter, of the Crime Writers of Canada, and traveling to Siena Italy, Havana Cuba, and Madrid Spain to attend conferences and continue research on up-coming writing projects. Jon lives in Toronto and in Waterton Lakes, Alberta.

Jon Redfern's profile page

• Winner, Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel

Thorough research and skillful, vivid writing.

London Free Press

A delightful Victorian romp through the London theatre world.

Globe and Mail

A theatre mystery of the finest order.

ReviewingTheEvidence.com