Howard Shrier’s first novel, Buffalo Jump, won the Arthur Ellis Award for best first novel. High Chicago, his second, will definitely be short-listed for another. It’s got the same stellar characters, the same clever plotting, and, if anything, an even better story. If you missed Buffalo Jump, you might not know that investigator Jonah Geller, of [...]
Dialogue so sharp you could cut your tongue on it. That’s what makes this second novel by Howard Shrier so appealing. His fictional gumshoe Jonah Geller needs to solve the problem of a young girl who apparently committed suicide by leaping from the balcony of a high rise apartment. He’s not so sure the girl did [...]
Howard Shrier’s second novel, High Chicago, again features the Toronto-based Jewish detective Jonah Geller. It ups the ante from his previous novel in terms of the forces Jonah is confronting, but more significantly in terms of the damage the world ends up inflicting on him. Whereas Shrier’s award-winning debut novel Buffalo Jump dealt as much with [...]
If you’re like me the first mystery that needs solving about mystery novels is who actually reads them? There’s this huge market for them and they always contain the same things: a gruesomely engrossing premise that hooks the reader, a detective with a chip on his or her shoulder, a flirtation with a tough-as-nails superior officer, [...]
A follow-up to the successful Buffalo Jump, High Chicago continues the adventures of Toronto private detective Jonah Geller. The setting is Toronto, the plot hinges on the development of the long-neglected waterfront. What could be more local than that? Shrier is one of the most exciting new voices in the mystery genre. This sophomore effort is [...]
Buffalo Jump offers funny and fresh takes on the private-eye novel and not-so-funny trips into scary moral territory. The novel is set near the Canada-United States border and crosses that border to tell a pair of stories that converge to pack a tough and thoroughly contemporary punch. -- Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders [...]
When a grieving mother comes to Toronto private investigator Jonah Geller wanting to find answers about her daughter’s alleged suicide, this story takes off and never stops. Jonah and his sidekicks discover the dirty business going on in the high stakes world of waterfront construction. The story starts in Toronto but halfway moves to Chicago where [...]
Pop quiz for all Canadian mystery fans: name the creator (hint: first name Howard) of a fictional Jewish private investigator based in southern Ontario. If you said Howard Engel, it would be understandable. One of Canada’s best-loved crime writers (and member of the Order of Canada), Engel has regaled readers for decades with the exploits of [...]
Jonah Geller would not call himself a nice Jewish boy. He never finished college, he works as a private detective for an agency that largely does surveillance work, he likes ham and eggs for breakfast and doesn’t call his mother enough. He suffers from intense and troubling nightmares about his service in the Israeli army, as [...]
Blunt action, realistically and graphically described and paced with just enough time to catch your breath before the next sudden eruption. Add the right feel for dialogue, a plot and writing that’s just the ideal temperature for a mystery-thriller and you have Buffalo Jump–a debut novel winner by Howard Shrier. Toronto PI Jonah Geller arrives home [...]
Howard Shrier is a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award, Canada’s highest prize for crime fiction. The author of the acclaimed Jonah Geller series and other works, he publishes new stories and helps emerging authors finish their books, all on this site.
