A KILLING WINTER

A Canadian journalist with gambling issues risks his life to solve the murder of a friend.

Leo Desroches is not exactly the model of a modern newspaper reporter. Sure, he’s first class at his job—the best I’ve got, says his boss at the Edmonton Journal—at least from time to time. The downside of Leo is that he too often parks his hat, and sometimes his bankroll, in casinos when he’s expected to be somewhere else, like the newsroom nailing down a final fact for a front-page story, or at home with his long-suffering wife and two unhappy kids. Leo once turned bank robber in order to generate a grubstake, after which he wrote the story about the cops’ failure to capture an elusive criminal. In the past, Leo’s habit has cost him dearly, rendering him both jobless and homeless. But now he’s back at work, flush with fresh opportunity. Enter Marvin, a young man who befriended Leo when he was on the street. Or rather, exit Marvin, since he seems to have vanished without a trace. Leo’s search for him takes him to some dark and dangerous places where the odds against survival clearly favor the house.

The further adventures of an unabashed antihero (Fall from Grace, 2011, etc.). Not a safe bet for the general reader, but readers drawn to Patricia Highsmith’s famously amoral Ripley should certainly roll the dice.