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When the Flood Falls: The Falls Mysteries (The Falls Mysteries, 1) Paperback – August 7, 2018
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When a phantom stalker targets her friend, Lacey McCrae’s crime-busting skills are tested to their limits.
With her career in tatters and her marriage receding in the rear-view mirror, ex-RCMP corporal Lacey McCrae trades her uniform for a tool belt, and the Lower Mainland for the foothills west of Calgary. Amid the oil barons, hockey stars, and other high rollers who inhabit the wilderness playground is her old university roommate, Dee Phillips. Dee’s glossy life was shaken by a reckless driver; now she’s haunted by a nighttime prowler only she can hear.
As snowmelt swells the icy river, threatening the only bridge back to civilization, Lacey must make the call: assume Dee’s in danger and get her out, or decide the prowler is imaginary and stay, cut off from help if the bridge is swept away.
- Print length424 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDundurn Press
- Publication dateAugust 7, 2018
- Dimensions5 x 1 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101459741218
- ISBN-13978-1459741218
Editorial Reviews
Review
More than a riveting page-turner, When the Flood Falls also offers readers a stirring celebration of female friendship and the ability of women to summon strength and resilience in times of crisis. I already can’t wait for the next Lacey McCrae adventure. ― Angie Abdou, author of In Case I Go
Beneath the many mysteries of Barnard’s character-driven debut are enduring questions about the complexities of life and the choices people make. ― Kirkus Reviews
A master at developing characters with believable, deep and rich histories that give authenticity to their psychological states and affect the interactions and relationships within the story. ― Jennifer Taylor
Set in the stunning foothills of the Rocky Mountains, When the Flood Falls weaves a compelling, intricate tale of love, community, and betrayal in the high-stakes world of big oil and hockey. In this impressive series debut, Barnard introduces Lacey McCrae, a tough but fragile ex-RCMP officer in search of a new path to dignity. ― Barbara Fradkin, author of The Amanda Doucette mystery series
A taut, high-stakes thriller that is deeply personal, internal, and psychological. ― Foreword Reviews
This complex, unconventional debut, which revolves around the power of men to instill fear, unfolds slowly, introducing the voices of three individuals suffering from some form of trauma. ― Library Journal
From the Back Cover
As snowmelt swells the icy river, threatening the only bridgeback to civilization, Lacey must make the call: assume Dee's in danger and gether out of there, or decide the prowler is imaginary and stay, cut off fromhelp if the bridge is swept away.
About the Author
J.E. Barnard's first book in the Falls Mysteries series, When the Flood Falls, won the CWC Award for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel in 2016. Her novella Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Gauge was an Alberta Book of the Year and a 2018 Prix Aurora finalist. She lives in Calgary.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Spruces ringed the glade, their roots lost in tangled undergrowth, while before the house, all was austere. Red rock shards filled zigzag beds punctuated by spiky shrubs, their jagged edges scraping on Lacey as she gave the doorbell a final push. Dee had coaxed her for weeks, leaning on the good old university days and shared misadventures in her daily texts and voice mails, to set up this reunion supper, and now she, not Lacey, was late. Six years of separation due to careers and spouses was supposed to finally end, but Dee wasn’t home.
As the last echo of the last chime died, Lacey retreated from the stone-paved patio to her shabby Civic to lean on the fender and contemplate her options. Th ey amounted to two: leave now, or wait until Dee either showed up or replied to her messages.
Five minutes. She would give Dee that much. She glanced at her watch to mark the time, crossed her arms, and settled into the alert idleness learned through years of conducting stakeouts on the Force. Catalogue every detail. Th at was how you knew when something had changed. Th e fl utter of a drape might indicate someone hiding inside, or that a rear window had been opened for a stealthy escape, sending a draft through the rooms. A barely registered movement beyond a hedge could signify someone sneaking out, or in. A man in a mail uniform wasn’t always delivering letters and fl yers. Not that these scattered acreages along the hillside would have home delivery. On the edge of wilderness, an hour from Calgary, at the feet of the Rocky Mountains, a mailman would stick out like a neon Popsicle on an igloo.
As she leaned there in the still glade, the forest rustled toward her from all sides. Tiny sounds ― leaves or birds or little rodent feet going their secret ways through last year’s leaves ― whispered isolation. She might be alone on the hillside, save for the sharp corner of a roofl ine higher up. She should be on her way back to Calgary and supper, although it would mean crossing that lone bridge over the rushing brown river again.
Locals expected the last of the snowpack to surge through sometime next week. Until then the river would keep rising, bringing down whole trees and threatening the bridge. Blinding, turbulent water, Lacey’s worst nightmare, and right under the windows of her new jobsite, the not-quite-fi nished Bragg Creek Arts Centre and Foothills History Museum. Lacey knew even less about art and history than she did about security-camera wiring, but being Wayne’s gopher brought in some pay and kept her most desperate worries at bay, at least during working hours. She couldn’t ask more than that of her new life. Not yet. Was that shushing sound the river tumbling over its banks, or just the breeze through the spruce tops? Where was Dee?
Only three minutes had passed. Th e emptiness was getting to her. Too much open space after a decade in the overpopulated Lower Mainland, where even the wilderness trails were rarely empty. It was a two-minute drive down the hill into Bragg Creek. She could grab a burger at the bar, the only eatery that wouldn’t look askance at her dusty jeans, workboots, and faded T-shirt. Okay, two more minutes and then she was going. She scanned the front of the house again.
Still, no drapes fl uttered, but this time she recognized something odd she’d overlooked in her annoyance. Dee loved the sun and the wide-open sky, fi r trees piercing the blue, birds fl uttering past her windows. Loved to watch deer wander through the yard to nibble on anything she planted. She had gushed about all that to Lacey when she’d fi rst moved out here, six, maybe seven years ago. Th at explained the spiky shrubs, anyway. Not deer food. Why, now, were all the windows shrouded in heavy drapes on a celestially sunny day, when small birds were squabbling around a seed tray suspended from the porch overhang? All these Dee loved, and yet she had blocked them out.
Lacey straightened up, surveying the house with the keen ex-cop’s eyes she hadn’t fully brought to bear earlier. No visible windows were open, but that could mean air conditioning. No drapes had been disturbed since her last scan. If the back of the house wasn’t as closed in, maybe Dee was merely protecting expensive upholstery from sun damage. Circling the house would fi ll in the two minutes nicely. A single glance inside could ease the half-formed worry that her old friend might be lying injured inside, victim of an accident or worse. Times beyond count as a constable, she had undertaken welfare checks on strangers, saved a few, and found some past saving. She could not let this one pass her by.
Returning to the carved front door, she turned left past the vast windows and around a massive fi eldstone chimney stack. Each window she saw was securely locked and swathed. French doors on the rear terrace had their blinds turned down too tight to see anything at all between the slats. Impossible to guess which rooms lay beyond which windows. She’d seen grow ops less carefully cloistered.
A plank deck connected the terrace and the front patio to a triple-car garage. A high post-and-beam pergola supported a riot of blossoms in hanging baskets well above the reach of a deer’s teeth. Garage doors: all locked. No sign of forced entry anywhere, no signals of distress. Just an unfriendly house devoid of its current resident.
She skirted the sage-green deck furniture and looked again over the rear yard. Th e spruce circle was wider here, leaving space for a tended lawn and opening a gap where a woodland path ran up to a wider trail. A wire-fenced dog run attached to the garage was deserted, but the stainless steel water bowl was half full. Maybe Dee had simply taken a dog for a walk. She’d always had a dog. Young Duke, a honey-haired Labrador, had hiked the Algonquin Trail with them when he was a gambolling pup, barely knee high. He’d be old now, and slow. Maybe it was a slow walk, and this search and speculation were only the old habits of a cop’s brain that had not quite retired six weeks ago, when Lacey’s resignation letter landed on her staff sergeant’s desk. Th e RCMP had been her life for most of a decade, and now it wasn’t. Her head needed time to adjust to civilian life, to stop seeing criminals behind every closed curtain. Dee had simply gone for a walk and lost track of time.
Blue sky refl ected on glass in the garage’s rear wall: a window inside the dog run, above Lacey’s head. Impossible to tell from here whether it was covered or not, but she bet not. Dee’s vehicle was probably parked in there right now, supporting the walk theory. Finding out would fi ll in another minute or two. She jiggered an oblong patio table, one end at a time, down the wide plank steps and into the dog run. When it was fi rmly in position against the garage wall, she scrambled up and peered in. What would Dee think if she came home to fi nd her old friend perched on a patio table, peeking into her garage?
Whatever Lacey had subconsciously hoped or feared, the garage held no answers. A second small window high up in the end wall cast enough light to show her a gold Lexus SUV and a rack holding two bright plastic kayaks. Th e third space was empty now of whatever Dee’s recently divorced skunk had driven. Did that SUV mean she had gone for a walk, or did she have a second vehicle that she now parked in Neil’s spot? Had she gone away with someone else? Why wasn’t she calling back or replying to texts?
As Lacey turned back to the house, to the deep shade of the front patio, she blinked. Just for a second, she had fl ashed back to coming home to her old house in Langley, checking that all the drapes were shut tight the way she had left them, and scanning the street for Dan’s car before she risked opening the door. She knew all too well what she’d been afraid of then. Was Dee afraid of her ex-husband, too? In the warm afternoon sunshine, Lacey shivered.
Product details
- Publisher : Dundurn Press (August 7, 2018)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 424 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1459741218
- ISBN-13 : 978-1459741218
- Item Weight : 12.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 5 x 1 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #5,774,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19,094 in Small Town & Rural Fiction (Books)
- #45,619 in Amateur Sleuths
- #82,351 in Women Sleuths (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
A double Aurora nominee & Debut Dagger finalist, Jayne is best known to Steampunks as the mind behind the World Parasol Dueling Championships, a sport inspired jointly by Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate and the parasol-wielding ferocity of Amelia Peabody, esteemed Egyptologist & crime-solver penned by Elizabeth Peters. 'MADDIE HATTER AND THE GILDED GAUGE' was named ALBERTA BOOK OF THE YEAR in 2018. As J.E. Barnard Jayne writes women's wilderness suspense in THE FALLS MYSTERIES, with WHEN THE FLOOD FALLS bringing home the Canadian Crime Writing Award of Excellence for Best Unpublished in 2016. Jayne divides her time between Alberta and Vancouver Island, and in the absence of a clockwork companion she gives orders to her ginger cat, who ignores them with the majestic indifference of cats everywhere.
JE Barnard writes suspense in which women reclaim their power - over partners, bosses, exes, or dangerous strangers - by honing their own skills, gaining trustworthy allies, or manipulating systems that would oppress them. As heroines on their own journeys through life, these characters save themselves and give helping hands to other women & girls.
In THE FALLS MYSTERIES, burnt-out ex-Mountie Lacey McCrae might be still having nightmares about her abusive ex but she doesn't hesitate to step up when her old university roommate is targeted by a midnight prowler, or when her neighbor, ill with #MECFS, needs a driver for an appointment.
In The Maddie Hatter Adventures (written as Jayne Barnard) the renegade daughter of a powerful British lord has rejected an arranged marriage and is forging her own path as an investigative journalist under cover of fashion reporting, along the way lending a hand to other young women as they attempt to seize control of their own lives.
In life, as in her writing, Jayne supports services for women and children coping with the aftermath of violence, and for the nearly 600,000 Canadians struck down by ME/CFS (and now Long Covid), and for all the people young to elderly who need trauma-informed care and support.
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After recently resigning from the RCMP, Lacey McCrae is working as a gofer for a security firm that is installing a security system for a new art museum. Her temporary position provides her with the opportunity to reconnect with her former university roommate, Dee Phillips, who is president of the museum board. Lacey quickly realizes all is not right with Dee who, like her, is recently divorced. She finally gets Dee to open to her and her concern turns to outright worry when Dee confesses someone appears to be stalking her. Lacey is quick to offer to help her figure who is behind the mysterious goings on, but will she uncover the identity of the elusive perpetrator?
Due to her experiences with her abusive ex, Lacey is quick to believe that Dee’s ex-husband Neil is behind the recent events. She becomes even more convinced after she makes an unexpected discovery, but can she find the proof to back her supposition? The situation with Dee soon takes a shocking turn which also coincides with the disappearance of Jarad Fiske, the young hockey player who, months early, was involved in a hit and run in which Dee was injured and her dog was killed.
As the search for Jarad intensifies, Lacey continues her investigation into who would want to harm Dee. She still believes Neil might be responsible, but with the help of Dee’s neighbors, Jan and Terry Brenner, they widen their search for the suspect. The case takes a stunning turn when the reason for Jarad’s disappearance is revealed.
Despite a bit of a slow start, When the Flood Falls is an interesting mystery with an engaging cast of characters. The investigation into who is stalking Dee moves a steady pace but Lacey suffers from tunnel vision for a good part of her quest for answers. With plenty of unexpected twists and some fantastic red herrings, J.E. Barnard brings the novel to an action-packed conclusion. Fans of the genre will enjoy this first novel in The Falls Mysteries series.
I received a complimentary copy for review.
Not to spoil anything, but the twist ending was completely unexpected. Grab a cup of tea and settle in!
Lacey McCrea is a former RCMP police officer. She has now gone to a little town outside of Calgary to visit her friend Dee Phillips, a former college roommate, and to recover from her divorce. She doesn’t really have a job. Dee offers to let her stay at her lovely home while she is in the area.
Dee also has a problem. She has a night time stalker who may or may not be real. Lacey agrees to help her figure out who it is and stop them.
The area in which Dee lives is known for its high rollers: oil magnates, hockey stars and other famous people. As Lacey meets them, they all seem superficial and pretty self-absorbed. Lacey learns some very interesting secrets and makes connections between the events that are occurring now and the past. There is a lot going on behind the scenes – scheming and manipulating events. Lacey’s investigation moves along, albeit not very quickly. The stalker turned out to be real, and their identity was a surprise – at least to me.
This novel moves along very slowly. There are moments of suspense, but they are not long lasting. I felt like tossing in the towel a few times, until the story finally picked up a little. There was almost too much background information given on Lacey. I didn’t really care for her. She was too wrapped up in herself; too concerned with her own garbage to accurately assess the situation of her friend Dee.
The redeeming aspect of this novel was the gorgeous countryside described in the book. I’ve been to that area of Canada, and it is breathtaking. Ms. Barnard described it so well that I was transported back to the times I visited there myself.
I want to thank NetGalley and Dundurn for forwarding to me a copy of this interesting book to read and review.
I liked the characters and the author's vivid descriptions of scenic Bragg Creek. I could see all the natural beauty as well as the peril of the swollen river. There was a lot going on and I didn't figure out who was responsible for Dee's 'accidents' until the author revealed it. An enjoyable read that held my attention from beginning to end.
Thank you, J.E. Barnard, Dundurn, and NetGalley for the eARC to read and review.
Top reviews from other countries
The setting is brought vividly to life with beautiful descriptions, and the characters will tug at your heart along the challenging journey to unravel the clues and identify the killer. Unexpected twists and turns will keep your brain buzzing with excitement.
I’d recommend reading this book just for the setting alone, but there is much more to it than that. I loved the characters, especially Jan, whose struggles to be heard amidst illness and addiction gave the book a Hitchhockian flavor at times. The last the third of the book moves at a killer pace. Can’t wait to read the next book in the series.