Laurali Rose Appleby Wright (1939-2001) was a Canadian journalist, playwright, and author. She is best remembered for her series of mysteries about Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, ranking officer of the RCMP detachment in the small town of Sechelt on the Gold Coast of British Columbia. The Gold Coast is a stretch of land along the western coast of Canada with an unusually temperate climate that summons vacationers to bask in the sun and encourages farmers and gardeners to ply their skills.
The Alberg series is notable in that of the nine books, seven of them were finalists for or won a major award in the mystery field.
Alberg relocates to Sechelt in the first book of the series, The Suspect (Viking, 1985; Felony & Mayhem, 2015), an inverted mystery that was a finalist for the 1986 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel and won the 1986 Edgar Award for Best Mystery. Alberg is settling into the quiet life of the small town, trying to get the overgrown shrubbery in the garden of his new house under control, when he’s notified of an unmistakable homicide in an older neighborhood.
Major crimes are rare in the region and he is thrown back on his big city experience. His training takes over and he jumpstarts the standard forensic and evidence collection process. When it is well underway, he turns his attention to interviewing the neighbors and establishing a timeline, none of which is especially informative. Since the murder is committed in first few pages, the reader is left to watch Alberg exercise the standard routines and wait for him to draw the logical conclusions.
This is a beautifully written, character-driven mystery. The history between the victim and the murderer unfolds a bit at a time. Eventually the cause of the animosity between the two is clear. Alberg is an introspective individual, made more so by his recent divorce. He is also a more than capable detective with a good bit of insight into the people he interviews. His insight vanishes around women, however, and the town librarian sets him straight a couple of times. She has her own connection to the killer and is uneasy as she sees Alberg begin to focus on him. The play of well-developed characters with and against each other is intriguing, as is the unusual structure. Highly recommended.