Rachel Greenaway
Rachel Greenaway, my sister, lives in Nelson, BC. She is a fine writer who has written the acclaimed six-book BC Blues crime series under the name R.M. Greenaway, along with several published short stories.
Check out her work or get in touch through rmgreenaway.com.
The BC Blues Crime Series
The BC Blues crime series features plenty of crossed wires, brilliant intuition, touchy relationships, secrets, betrayals, and mad hurdles to cross. Within each stand-alone novel winds a dark backstory, propelled along by the eminently imperfect RCMP Constables Cal Dion, Dave Leith and JD Temple.
COLD GIRL
City-born RCMP Constable Dion isn’t prepared for snow and silence and scary dark forests. Yet following a life-altering crash he finds himself downgraded to uniform and transferred to the snowbound Hazeltons of northern B.C., assigned to help in the search for a local country singing pop star. But the accident has dinged his brains, and how can he find pop stars when he can’t find his own keys?
Constable David Leith has troubles of his own: has the missing young singer fallen prey to the monster that has been stalking his territory for a year? Then another woman, not much more than a ghost to the investigators, also goes missing in the drifts, and only the bitter end reveals who is the coldest girl of all.
UNDERTOW
An unsolved death that had troubled Dion last summer — a body washed up onto the rocky shores of North Vancouver — is back on his mind as he returns home after a year up north. While he works to fit back in and put closure to the Jane Doe drowning, newly arrived Constable Dave Leith is learning to cope with his first big-city posting.
But he and the team have bigger concerns: Why would anyone beat up a young electrician, then track down his wife and baby girl to finish them off? The triple homicide leaves behind one small witness and a handful of cryptic clues.
In the thick of his job, Leith has also to deal with the mystery surrounding his difficult coworker …what really happened on the night of Dion’s crash, and where is the skeleton hidden?
CREEP
The October rains seem to have brought a series of disasters to North Vancouver. A missing hiker is found collapsed on an old-growth forest trail in the Lynn Headwaters park; a foul smell leads first responders to a mauled body in a crawl space; a trick-or-treater is struck down by a driver who flees the scene unpunished; a small boy is attacked by a man in wolf form and left for dead. The intertwined cases are complicated by rumours, Halloween mayhem, urban legends, and dangerous rifts within the team.
FLIGHTS & FALLS
In the cold of December, along the Sea-to-Sky Highway, a car swerves into the ditch, killing the driver. Was the crash by accident or design? A cruel game seems to be at play on the cliffs overlooking Horseshoe Bay, and Leith, Dion and Temple have to act fast to understand its rules, name its players, and end the perverse fun before it veers out of control. When a fellow RCMP constable is targeted, the race is on to a deadly finish.
RIVER OF LIES
A toddler vanishes from her crib while a party swings upstairs, her disappearance setting off a string of tragedies. Whether linked to the abduction or not, young people are dying along the Seymour River in North Vancouver. Leith, Dion and Temple investigate in the pitiless rain, working to untangle truth from lies, desperate to find the vital clue that will lead to an arrest and maybe — though hope is fading fast — to the rescue of the missing child.
FIVE WAYS TO DISAPPEAR
The crime is gruesome and bewildering: a craftsman spiked to the lawn by his own artwork, up on the breezy heights of Paradise Road. The task of netting the killer falls at the feet of Leith, Dion, and Temple, leaving them to wonder, was it an aesthetics-fuelled feud with the neighbours? An enemy from the dead man’s past? Or that most challenging type of crime to solve — a random attack?
Drawn into an offside mystery of his own, Dion befriends a young magician who then seems to make herself disappear, adding to his troubles. But with the team closing in on the Paradise Road killer, it’s time to put aside his personal fears and take on the lead role in setting a trap for the volatile individual they have come to suspect.
It’s a foolproof setup, but even the best laid plans can go awry, and this one leads him straight into the fight for his life.
What People are Saying
“Greenaway brings a keen understanding of love, loyalty, frailty, and greed to her multilayered series debut.” Kirkus Reviews
“R.M. Greenaway’s dark and haunting BC Blues series introduces a cast of finely rendered, flawed and unforgettable characters…. The result is a mystery that is both a gripping depiction of police procedur and a deep reflection of human nature.” Deryn Collier, author of Confined Space and Open Secret
“Both he [Dion] and Greenaway have made impressive debuts … headed toward genuine crime-fiction acclaim.” London Free Press
“When both constables get involved in a pair of hugely intricate murder cases, one of them of the serial variety, each reveals investigative strengths that give an already strong narrative an extra edge, all of which promises more good things ahead for Greenaway’s RCMP series.” Toronto Star
“Greenaway is at her finest when she takes us up into the cold, forbidding wilderness, where few comforts serve to ease the mind or body.” Globe and Mail
Short Stories in Anthologies
Short Stories
KEENE HILL
It is a summer of omens for Claire, living with her trucker husband in the hot and arid East Kootenay hills. Amidst a growing sense of unease, she watches her husband’s mood deterioriate — but only when their relationship reaches the tipping point does she realize she should have heeded the warnings and fled. What the omens haven’t told her is how it would end…
ROZOTICA
It’s the 1970s, and Heather’s humdrum life as a waitress goes south when she follows Milestone into his latest money-making scheme — pitching sexy androids to prospective shareholders. All she has to do is wear the wig, the short-shorts, along with a bit of fake circuitry, and strut about as Milestone’s prototype. Grifting half-naked in a hotel room full of strangers — what could possibly go wrong?
THE THRESHOLD
Blaine, a hotshot photographer, is gathering images for his soon-to-be-published collection of urban decay. What his telephoto zooms in on as he explores the Vancouver docks is a man bleeding to death in the waterfront weeds. Tragic — but the light is slanting in just so, illuminating a life crossing over. What a great photo op, and what fabulous potential captions. Blaine has to make a choice. What he doesn’t realize is how that decision will change his world forever.
GRACE
Young Grace abhors her neighbour, if for no worse crime than being “old and ugly”. With the aid of the narrator, her bewildered baby sister, she sets an ingenious trap … and suffers the most horrific backfire she could ever imagine.
HOT
Walking, talking, cooking and cleaning bots are a part of life now, available in a variety of makes and models. Much better than human hired help with its needs and wants, plus the occasional thievery. A good bot will do its job flawlessly and without demands. And best of all, without a mind of its own. Which renders it safe … or so the manual says.