Boston serves as the backdrop for Shrier’s explosive third crime novel featuring Jonah Geller, a Toronto PI with a penchant for cases south of the border. When the Brookline, Mass., police are unable to find David Fine, a “transplant fellow” and devout Jew who’s disappeared from Boston’s Sinai Hospital, Fine’s parents hire Geller to investigate. Aided [...]
What a great book High Chicago is. I thoroughly enjoyed it, could not put it down. You and Jonah Geller have an avid new fan. -- Deon Meyer, bestselling author of Thirteen Hours, Devil's Peak and Blood Safari
My obsession with crime fiction began while I was still at Concordia University. In 1979, I wrote a weekly column in the student newspaper called “Ooze and Oz” and one day, on deadline and out of ideas, I banged out a private-eye story set in Biblical times. The unnamed shamus tries to figure out if Lucifer [...]
I was more than an avid fan of Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer series. Like many a crime writer I know, I consider him my greatest influence. Travelling in California in 1980, I decided to look up Macdonald in Santa Barbara. It didn’t work out quite the way that I planned as you'll see in this memoir, [...]
National Post, January 16, 2017 American historian Caleb Carr created a stir with his 1994 novel The Alienist. Set in New York City in 1896, the novel mixed historical characters such as then-Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt with the fictional Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a pioneer in criminal psychology. Helped by reporter John Moore, Kreizler profiled the fiend [...]
A warm welcome to Howard Shrier as our latest victim. This award-winning author leaves no stone unturned. He has done it all, from journalism, many kinds of media, theatre and television, sketch comedy and improv. Teaching creative writing at University of Toronto and the author of the Jonah Geller suspense novels. Jamie: Thanks for being here [...]
I can't decide if this photo makes me look like a modern Orthodox Jew or Indiana Jones's lightweight brother. Maybe I'm a little of both. A Star of David carved into the chest of a murdered journalist signals this is no ordinary crime. Which means Jonah Geller, the world-weary private investigator hired by the [...]
Reviewing the Evidence: Describe yourself in a sentence? Howard Shrier: A storyteller and professional writer since the age of 21, breaking out on the crime scene with his Jonah Geller novels, while raising two sons with the only woman who could have made it happen. RTE: What’s the one record you’d take to a desert island? [...]
Howard Shrier likes his crime fiction hard-boiled, no chaser. So, after nearly three decades as a writer in one capacity or another, from journalist to corporate communications, when it was time to develop the lead character of his debut novel, Buffalo Jump, it was rough and tumble all the way. "I love the classic American private [...]
Howard Shrier was born and raised in Montreal but now calls Toronto his home. After his successful debut novel, Buffalo Jump, Howard Shrier is back with High Chicago, the next in the Jonah Geller series. Experience Toronto had the chance to chat with the author about the book,his thoughts on Toronto and much more. ETO: What [...]
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.
