Set in the Yukon and Vancouver during the 1890s, Sharon Rowse's debut mystery novel The Silk Train Murders (Carroll & Graf, $24.95 2008) features a gentleman adventurer and failed miner, John Lansdowne Granville, who takes a job guarding one of the "silk trains" that were designed to carry precious shipments of silk across the continent to New York. After foiling a sabotage attempt on his first day on the job, Granville and his friend Sam Scott find a murdered body on the second. He proceeds to absolve his fellow gold seeker Scott of a murder charge, searching for clues in opium dens, brothels and gambling joints in the late 19th century Vancouver.

This was followed by The Missing Heir Murders: A Klondike Era Mystery (Vancouver: Three Cedars Press 2014).

Rowse has history and literature degrees from Simon Fraser University. 978-0786719464

[BCBW 2014] "Fiction"