The Ambitious City

By (author) Scott Thornley
Categories: Fiction
Series: The MacNeice Mysteries
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Paperback : 9780307359285, 464 pages, May 2012

Description

The eagerly anticipated 2nd book in his MacNeice series from acclaimed crime novelist Scott Thornley.
 
If a local biker war isn't enough—seven shrink-wrapped corpses found buried between the barns on a nearby farm—MacNeice receives a desperate phone call from his old friend, the mayor of Dundurn. Dredging is nearly completed on the ambitious waterfront project the mayor hopes will revive his mini rust belt of a city, but the whole thing may be about to come off the rails: the dredgers have turned up six more bodies at the bottom of the lake, and two of them, encased in concrete, are fairly fresh. The mayor wants MacNeice to fix things, discreetly and fast. The trouble is there is another “visionary” on the loose in Dundurn, a serial killer who wants to rid the city of high-achieving young women of colour.
 
With the body count rising, the usually super-competent Detective Superindent MacNeice feels outgunned by the bikers, outmaneuvered by the serial killer—and deeply unsettled by the connections he begins to uncover between the biker wars and the US and Canadian concrete companies who’ve won the bid to help build the mayor’s dream. The only good thing about the crisis is that he's persuaded Fiza Aziz, the young Muslim detective who'd burned out on their last case together, to come back to the force. The bad thing: she deliberately puts herself in the killer's sights.

Reviews

“Captivating…. Along with a terrific plot, Thornley produces prose that is both hard-hitting and thoughtful…. I’m already anticipating MacNeice’s next investigation.”
Edmonton Journal
“Terrific.... So good…. Thornley blends history into a really good cop-shop story…. Read this and then look for the first MacNeice book, Erasing Memory.”
—Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail