This story is for readers who appreciate explosive, gritty, atmospheric crime thrillers with morally complex characters. It will strongly resonate with fans of authors like Dennis Lehane or C.J. Box, who enjoy stories where the claustrophobic setting of a small town is as much a character as the people within it. Anyone who loves a slow-burn mystery that explodes into high-stakes action will be captivated by the secrets of Arbutus Creek.
“… a confident and skilled writing style that is perfectly suited to the story being told. It drew me deep into the world of Arbutus Creek and its troubled inhabitants. The writing is lean and purposeful, creating a sense of authenticity and grit that made the story feel both thrilling and emotionally resonant.”
Alfred Cool is a West Coast Canadian crime novelist—winner of the national CAA CanWrite! short story contest—whose small-town noir blends grit, heart, and a fierce sense of place; a former logger turned technologist and instructor with seven novels published.
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Adult Crime / Small-Town Noir • (Book 1 of a three-part series-book #2 Dec 2025)
On the rain-soaked coast of British Columbia, Arbutus Creek is split between working-class “gumbooters” and wealthy “Gaters” from Wolf Harbour. Fury Mezzaroba, a talented photographer on parole, is trying to keep his head down and manage diabetes that can drop him into blackouts. When Judge Nelson’s daughter, Paige, vanishes after a grad-night kegger, the town wants a culprit more than the truth—and Fury, with a record and proximity, is the easiest target.
Detective Doolan, long hostile to Fury, drives the early case on grudge as much as evidence. Refusing to be railroaded, Fury starts asking what the police won’t. His search threads the Rose Café rumor mill, the shuttered mill that still dictates fortunes, and Huxley Manor, where Mongrel—enforcer for the Pythons biker gang—operates. Led by the calculating Eskay, the Pythons are tightening control of the regional meth trade while laundering money through respectable fronts.
Alfred Cool is a Canadian novelist whose crime fiction is steeped in the tides, timber, and tight-knit loyalties of the B.C. coast. Before studying English at Simon Fraser University, he worked as a coast logger; later he built a career as a computer technologist and taught both privately and at the college level. Those experiences—boardrooms and boomtowns, classrooms and logging roads—give his stories their textured sense of place and the moral ambiguity that defines small-town noir. He has published seven novels and more than twenty short stories. His work won first place (2013) and third place (2012) in the Canadian Authors Association’s CanWrite! national short story contest, with publications in The Danforth Review, The Otter, and several Canadian anthologies. A lifelong environmental advocate and West Coast resident, Cool writes about ordinary people forced to choose between community and survival when power turns ruthless. He is developing a four-book crime series set in a coastal town where long-buried secrets surface with the tide.
