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Festival Line-Up
Announcing the authors for Montreal Mystery / Montréal Mystère 2024!
Guest of Honour: Lilja Sigurðardóttir
J. L. Blanchard
Laurie Freedman Simon Gervais Jessica Hamilton Robyn Harding Daniel Kalla Isabelle Lafortune Catherine Lafrance Ann Lambert Shari Lapena Nicole Lundrigan André Marois |
Maureen Martineau
Catherine McKenzie Guillaume Morrisette Roz Nay Marcie R. Rendon Robert Rotenberg Amy Stuart Steve Urszenyi René Vézina Wendy Walker Tessa Wegert |
Presenting in English
Lilja Sigurðardóttirur
Lilja Sigurðardóttir, an acclaimed Icelandic author, has carved a unique niche in the realm of Nordic noir with her gripping and fast paced thrillers. Lilja's Reykjavík Noir Trilogy, (Snare, Trap and Cage) was met with widespread acclaim, establishing her as a fresh voice in Icelandic literature. Her subsequent works, characterized by complex characters, intricate plots, and fast paced, energetic style have continued to captivate readers worldwide. Lilja's ability to weave social issues into her narratives, from gender politics to environmental concerns, adds a layer of depth and relevance to her stories. Her writing has not only earned her a devoted following in Iceland but has also resonated internationally, with her books being translated into 20 languages. Lilja's work has been recognized with numerous awards and nominations, solidifying her status as a leading figure in contemporary crime fiction. Lilja Sigurðardóttir lives and writes in Reykjavik, drawing inspiration from the rich cultural and natural tapestry of Iceland. |
Laurie Freedman
Laurie Freedman is the debut author of Dwelling, published October, 2023. She studied English literature and graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School. She worked as an assistant crown attorney in the courtrooms of Toronto, raised her family and took night classes in creative writing. She is now a full-time writer who untangles plot structure while on long walks or swimming laps. You can visit her at lauriefreedmanbooks.com and follow her on Instagram @lauriefreedmanbooks. |
Simon Gervais
Simon Gervais is a former RCMP officer specialized in protective operations and counterterrorism. He is the #1 international bestselling author of twelve books including Hunt Them Down, his breakthrough novel, which is being adapted for television. His hit thriller The Last Protector—the first book in the Clayton White series—sold more than 250,000 copies within the first few months following its release and gathered more than 20,000 reviews on Amazon. In 2023, the TV rights to the Clayton White series were acquired by CBS Studios for development as a TV series with Jerry Bruckheimer producing. In 2022, Simon had the honor to be chosen by G.P. Putnam's Sons and the estate of literary icon Robert Ludlum to write a book within the illustrious Jason Bourne universe. Robert Ludlum's The Blackbriar Genesis was published in October 2022 with Publishers Weekly saying the book was an action-packed thriller worthy of the Ludlum legacy. Simon’s next book, The Elias Network, the first in a new series, will be published in September 2024. Simon, who is originally from Montreal, now lives with his wife and two children in Ottawa. He's an avid skier, SCUBA diver, yachtsman, and wine enthusiast. |
Jessica Hamilton
Jessica Hamilton was born in Sydney, Australia but grew up in Ontario, Canada. In university she studied journalism but found that it really got in the way of her creativity so went on to finish with degrees in English and Art History. After graduating she travelled with, her now, husband for six years, living and working in the Czech Republic, Taiwan, India, Nepal, Japan, Australia and Southeast Asia. After returning she studied writing at the Humber School for Writers as well as George Brown College. Jessica also volunteered for several years with the Canadian Authors Association as a program coordinator. She tried her hand at writing YA with little success and has since found that the darkness of thrillers comes much more easily to her. What You Never Knew, a thriller, was Jessica’s debut novel. Her second novel, Don’t You Dare, is also a thriller, both are published by Crooked Lane Books. Jessica lives an hour and a half north of Toronto on a magical, forested property that she calls Raven House, despite the fact that her two teenage children find it cringey and her husband does too but hides the fact well. |
Robyn Harding
Robyn Harding is the internationally and #1 bestselling author of several novels including THE DROWNING WOMAN, THE SWAP, THE ARRANGEMENT, HER PRETTY FACE, and THE PARTY, which was a finalist for the Author Ellis award for best crime novel. She has also written and executive produced an independent film. She lives in Vancouver, BC with her husband and two cute but deadly rescue chihuahuas. |
Photo by Michael Bednar
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Daniel Kalla
Daniel Kalla is an internationally bestselling author of many novels, including Fit to Die, The Darkness in the Light, Lost Immunity, The Last High, and We All Fall Down. Kalla practices emergency medicine in Vancouver, British Columbia. Visit him at DanielKalla.com or follow him on Twitter @DanielKalla. |
Photo by Pierre Arsenault
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Ann Lambert
Ann Lambert’s first novel of the Russell and Leduc mystery series, The Birds That Stay, was published in 2019 and was a finalist for the Concordia Best First Book Prize. Her second book in the series, The Dogs of Winter, was a finalist for the Canadian Crime Writers Award of Excellence, and won an Audiophile award. Her third book in the series, Whale Fall, came out in the fall of 2023. All three books were released as audiobooks narrated by Ann herself. Ann is the former head of The Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada. Over forty years in the theatre, she has written over 20 plays for the stage and radio. Ann is also the co-founder of Theatre Ouest End in Montreal and the vice-president of The Theresa Foundation, dedicated to supporting AIDS-orphaned children and their grandmothers, the education of Malawian girls, and alleviating food insecurity in several villages in Malawi. |
Photo by Tristan Ostler
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Shari Lapena
Shari Lapena is the #1 internationally bestselling author of seven suspense novels including The Couple Next Door, A Stranger in the House, An Unwanted Guest, Someone We Know, The End of Her, Not a Happy Family, and Everyone Here is Lying. A former lawyer and English teacher, Shari now writes full time from a farm in Ontario, where she lives with her husband. Her first thriller, The Couple Next Door, was a runaway global bestseller, selling 4 million copies worldwide. It was WHSmith’s “Book of the Year” in 2016 and the #1 Adult Fiction Title in the UK for 2017. All of Shari’s novels have been New York Times, UK Sunday Times, and Globe and Mail bestsellers. Three of her books have been Richard & Judy Book Club Picks. Her books have sold into forty territories around the world and have been optioned for film and TV. She doesn’t want you to be able to put her books down. |
Nicole Lundrigan
Nicole Lundrigan is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including An Unthinkable Thing and Hideaway, which were both shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence, in the Best Crime Novel category. Her work has appeared on “best of” selections from The Globe and Mail, Canadian Libraries Loan Stars, Amazon.ca, Chatelaine, Now magazine, and others. She grew up in Newfoundland, and now lives in Toronto. |
Catherine McKenzie
Catherine McKenzie was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. A graduate of McGill University in history and law, Catherine practiced law for twenty years before leaving to write full time. An avid runner, skier, and tennis player, she’s the author of numerous bestsellers including I’ll Never Tell and The Good Liar. Her works have been translated into multiple languages and I’ll Never Tell and Please Join Us have been optioned for development into television series. Visit her at CatherineMcKenzie.com or follow her on Twitter @CEMcKenzie1 or Instagram @CatherineMcKenzieAuthor. |
Roz Nay
Roz Nay’s debut novel, Our Little Secret, was a national bestseller, won the Douglas Kennedy Prize for best foreign thriller in France, and was nominated for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Mystery and the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award. Her second bestselling novel, Hurry Home, was shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Best Thriller of 2020. The Hunted, her third book, came out in July 2021 and was nominated for Best Crime Novel 2022. Roz has lived and worked in Africa, Australia, the US, and the UK. She now lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her husband and two children |
Marcie R. Rendon
Marcie Rendon is White Earth Ojibwe from Minnesota. She was listed in Oprah’s 2020 list of 31 Native American Author’s to read and received Minnesota’s 2020 McKnight Distinguished Artist Award. Rendon was recognized as a '50 over 50 Change-maker' by MN AARP and POLLEN in 2018. She has received prestigious recognition for her Cash Blackbear crime novels. She has a long list of poems published in anthologies and magazines, in print and online. With poet Diego Vazquez, she received the McKnight Spoken Word Fellowship 2017 for their work with incarcerated women in the county jail system. A mother, grandmother and sometimes performance artist, she works at writing; and arts activism to support other artists to succeed. |
Robert Rotenberg
Robert Rotenberg is the author of several bestselling novels, including Old City Hall, The Guilty Plea, Stray Bullets, Stranglehold, Heart of the City, and Downfall. He is a criminal lawyer in Toronto with his firm Rotenberg Shidlowski Jesin. He is also a television screenwriter and a writing teacher. Visit him at RobertRotenberg.com or follow him on Twitter @RobertRotenberg. |
Photo by Joey Stuart
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Amy Stuart
Amy Stuart is the #1 bestselling author of the Still series – Still Mine, Still Water, and Still Here – which has been optioned for television by Lark/NBC Universal. Amy’s fourth and most recent novel, A Death at the Party, spent more than 12 weeks on The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star bestseller lists. Shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award and winner of the 2011 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, Amy is the founder of Writerscape, an online community for hopeful and emerging writers. Amy lives in Toronto with her husband and their three sons. Connect with her on her website AmyStuart.ca and on Twitter @AmyFStuart. |
Steve Urszenyi
On its release in November 2023, Steve Urszenyi’s debut novel, Perfect Shot, was an instant Indigo Bestseller. It has since gone on to be a featured selection in the Globe and Mail and Canadian Living, and Apple Books said the story’s protagonist, Alexandra Martel, is their “new favorite hero—Alex is relentless and dedicated to taking down the bad guys.” Urszenyi’s writing has been compared to John le Carré, Stephen Hunter, Mark Greaney, and Jack Carr, and BookTrib called Perfect Shot “a modern-day masterpiece of international intrigue that qualifies as a major debut in this superb international thriller,” with Publishers Weekly saying “Urszenyi is a writer to watch.” Out in the Cold, the second in the Alex Martel series, will be published on November 12, 2024. Steve is a former paramedic and police tactical medic from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. |
Wendy Walker
Wendy Walker is the international bestselling author of psychological suspense. Her books have been published in over 23 foreign languages and have been optioned for film and television. Her latest novels include Don’t Look for Me, What Remains and American Girl. Wendy is a magna cum laude graduate of Brown University and Georgetown Law School. Prior to writing, she worked as a lawyer, investment banker, and trained for competitive figure skating. She lives in Fairfield County, Connecticut, where she raised three sons. |
Tessa Wegert
Tessa Wegert is the author of the Shana Merchant mysteries, set in the Thousand Islands of Ontario and Upstate New York. A former digital media strategist and journalist, Tessa’s work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Gazette, and The Economist, and her books have been featured on PBS, NCPR Radio, and in Canadian Living. Tessa was raised in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and now lives with her husband and children in Connecticut, where she studies martial arts and will be releasing her sixth novel, The Coldest Case, in November of 2024. |
Presenting in French
J.L. Blanchard
Ever since he was young, J.L. Blanchard has loved creating enigmatic worlds full of adventure. A frequent traveler, he brings back numerous notebooks and manuscripts: screenplays, tales, short stories... He is the author of the popular Bonneau et Lamouche detective series and the Zipolaris children's trilogy, both published by Fides. |
Isabelle Lafortune
Isabelle Lafortune, who graduated from UQAM in literature, has touched several artistic disciplines that inspire her in her creative writing. Between a show, a tale and a kindergarten class, she wrote her first novel, Terminal Grand Nord, winner of the Prix Jacques Mayer du Premier Polar (Jacques Mayer award for first crime novel). The next investigation, Chaîne de glace, was one of the finalists in the Best French Crime Book category of the Crime Writers of Canada excellence awards, as well as the Grands Prix de la Montérégie. Polarités, a novella featuring two characters from her first novel, was also published by Éditions XYZ, in the Draisine collection. At the moment, she is working on her next novel and is participating in the development of a TV series. |
Catherine Lafrance
After a rich career in journalism as well as the publication of three novels and a few short stories, Catherine Lafrance began writing a series of thrillers featuring an intrepid reporter, Michel Duquesne. We can taste her sense of suspense, her alert and fluid style, and her love for Nordicity. |
André Marois
Born in 1959 in Créteil, France, André Marois immigrated to Quebec in 1992. Since 1999, he has published noir novels for adults, crime and science-fiction novels for children and teenagers, as well as short stories and albums for young children. In 2013, his novel Les voleurs de mémoires won the Prix jeunesse (Youth Prize) of the Libraires du Québec. The graphic novel Le voleur de sandwichs, illustrated by Patrick Doyon, received the Governor’s General Award in 2015 and the Incorruptibles award in France. In the Héliotrope Noir collection, André published three noir novels: Bienvenue à Meurtreville, Irrécupérables and La sainte paix, which was a finalist for the St-Pacôme 2023 prize. André has published over 60 books. |
Maureen Martineau
Maureen Martineau has worked as an actor, director, and author at Théâtre Parminou. Her expertise in social art led to a collaboration in Central America and India with the NGO One Drop. She published her first detective novel in 2012, Le jeu de l’ogre, for which she won the prize for excellence from the CALQ. In 2014, her novel L’enfant promis won the Arthur-Ellis award for the best French Canadian detective novel. Une église pour les oiseaux was the inaugural publication for Héliotrope’s new series of thrillers, shortly followed by Zec La Croche. Both novels have been edited at L’aube noire, in France. At VLB Éditeur, the author published L’activiste-le jour des morts, La ville allumette and Les enfants de Godmann, the fifth instalment in the Inspector Detective Judith Allison series awarded by the CALQ with the important prize Artiste de l’année 2023 Centre-du-Québec (Artist of the Year 2023). Her short stories appear in Criminelles, a collection in collaboration with Ariane Gélinas, published by Alire, and also in Noir Montreal, published by Saint-Jean Éditeur. |
Catherine McKenzie
Catherine McKenzie was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. A graduate of McGill University in history and law, Catherine practiced law for twenty years before leaving to write full time. An avid runner, skier, and tennis player, she’s the author of numerous bestsellers including I’ll Never Tell and The Good Liar. Her works have been translated into multiple languages and I’ll Never Tell and Please Join Us have been optioned for development into television series. Visit her at CatherineMcKenzie.com or follow her on Twitter @CEMcKenzie1 or Instagram @CatherineMcKenzieAuthor. |
Guillaume Morisette
A polymath since his teenage years and an active member of MENSA Canada, Guillaume Morrissette lives in Trois-Rivières and teaches at UGTR. His first crime novel, L’affaire Mélodie Cormier, received several honors (First Thriller Prize and the Jury’s Choice Award, the 2015 St-Pacôme Prize, and the AQPF-ANEL Teachers’ prize, among others) and has been published in France. His novels were named ‘Readers’ Choice’ at the Salon du livre de Trois-Rivières for three consecutive years. |
Photo by JBC Média Laëtitia Boudaud
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René Vézina
A native of Québec City and a journalist by trade, René Vézina has been working in the field of communications for 40 years. Fascinated by history and a fan of noir novels, he started dreaming of writing fiction. That’s where the concept of his series Les mystères du Québec (‘The Mysteries of Québec’) came from. From one region of the province to another, the series focuses on unsolved historical enigmas that have been talked about forever without having been delved into. L’affaire Henry Cross is the first book of the series. |