Meet Riel Brava. Attractive. Razor-sharp. Ambitious. And something much more.
Riel, raised in Santa Barbara, California, has been transplanted to Nova Scotia where he is CEO of the Canadian Cannabis Corporation. It’s business as usual until Riel finds his world hanging by a thread. Actually, several threads. It doesn’t take the police long to determine all is not as it appears – and that includes Riel himself.
Pulled into a world not of his making, Riel resists the hunt to catch a killer. Resistance is futile. Detective Lin Raynes draws the reluctant CEO into the investigation, and the seeds of an unexpected and unusual friendship are sown. Raynes and Riel concoct a scheme to draw a confession out of the killer, but that plan is never put into place. Instead, Riel finds himself on the butt end of a rifle in the ribs and a long drive to the middle of Nowhere, Nova Scotia.
Why would someone want Norm dead, innocuous Norman Bedwell? A motive for murder is buried somewhere, and self-professed psychopath and cannabis production manager, Riel Brava, works with Detective Lin Raynes, aided by endless exotic coffee blends, to find it. As the noose tightens on an increasingly smaller number of suspects, who knew finding a murderer would be so simple? In the end, of course, it isn’t. It is a chunderfuck. Oh, and, Riel has one helluva wife. Pour yourself a cup of Ethiopian yirgacheffe and savor this often humorous, fast-paced whodunit. – Rand Gaynor, author of New Old Stories
#1
From Hung Out to Die
I’m moving full
steam ahead up three flights of stairs to my office. Speed is not second nature
to me. Given my innate state of being, caution is synonymous with survival. The
faster you move, the more likely you are to misstep. Generally, that’s something
I can’t risk.
I’m reaching for
the hallway switch when I notice a light three doors down. That’s Norm
Bedwell’s office. And that’s unusual. Our comptroller is typically among the
last to arrive. Only a fresh honey crueller from Tim Hortons has ever changed
his timeline.
I’m running to
Norm’s office now, tirade at the ready. The only thing that can prevent the
outside security system from working, aside from someone hacking into our
server, is if the door doesn’t latch firmly behind the entering employee. A
loud audible click lets you know the system is armed, and then you can move
forward. Employees are trained to wait for the click; if they don’t, an alarm
will sound for two minutes, albeit relatively soft as alarms go. But at this
time of day, no one is around to hear it.
It must be Norm’s
fault, which may mean the system has only been down for minutes if he just
arrived. It’s a question I’m tossing at our comptroller even before I’ve
stepped inside his office.
Norm doesn’t
answer.
He can’t because
he’s swinging from a rope tossed over an open beam (the designer’s brilliant
idea), a noose tight around his neck. He’s blue, but not as blue as I believe a
dead man should look. This poses a dilemma. I need a few moments to assess my
options and identify the safest and most effective course of action. However, I
am aware I don’t have the luxury of time. I’ve seen enough Law and Order
episodes to know if you don’t call the cops immediately, the delay in time will
get noticed, and you’re more likely to find yourself on the suspect list.
Dammit. I’m a suspect.
#2
From The Thong Principle: Saying What You Mean and
Meaning What You Say
When we use words people don’t instantly and naturally understand we
open the door to miscommunication. Now we all think we’re bright (because we
are), but the reality is that language is specialized and becoming more so. The
language we use when we’re having lunch with a friend or picking out a puppy at
the shelter is the language that comes most naturally to us. It’s also the
language that is most easily and instantly understood by the person we’re
communicating with.
Let me give you a famous example. When entrepreneur P.T. Barnum opened
Barnum's American Museum in New York almost 180 years ago he wanted it to
become one of the greatest attractions in the country. And he succeeded.
Between 1841 and 1865 roughly 38 million customers forked over a quarter to set
foot inside the museum. At that time, there were only 32 million people in
America.
So volume was critical to Barnum’s success. It didn’t take long for the
wily museum owner to realize that moving people through the museum’s exhibits
quickly was essential for greater profit. However, visitors wanted to linger at
the flea circus, gawk at the loom powered by a dog, and admire the glass
blowers.
Instead of raising the price of admission to raise more money or have
exhibit staff nudge people along, Barnum did what many great marketers have
done over the course of history. He fooled his customers by using a language
they didn’t understand.
Barnum posted a sign that read, "This Way to the Egress." Well
who wouldn’t want to see a magnificent egress? However, “egress” means “exit.”
Barnum wasn’t directing people to another fabulous, outrageous, incredible
display, it was sending them back outdoors. He knew if the sign read “exit”
people would go in another direction. Use a term they weren’t familiar with and
you could literally escort them outdoors.
At a cost, of course.
The reality is this. When we use a language our audience doesn’t
understand – deliberately or inadvertently – we run a high risk they won’t get
our message. And that’s the whole reason we communicated in the first place. If
readers and listeners don’t understand what we’re saying to them, we won’t
achieve our purpose, indeed we may achieve the opposite of what we intended,
and it’s likely we’ll have to communicate again. That wastes everyone’s time –
and impresses no one.
#3 From
“Swan Song” in Cold Canadian Crime
I arrived at the office at 7 a.m. The team
was already there, and the bannock, a deep-fried bread, was warm. I brought
molasses, a tradition passed down from my Newfoundland grandmother. Willie,
Kallik, and Ahnah thought this was sacrilege but agreed to give it a try.
Willie tossed his in the garbage when he thought I wasn’t looking, and Ahnah
wrapped hers neatly in a paper towel, also when she thought I wasn’t looking.
Kallik ate everything on his plate and reached for more bannock—and molasses.
After small talk and big bites, we got down
to business. We reviewed what forensics we had, the most important being the
knife. “Not a typical murder weapon,” I pointed out. “It’s too small to be
guaranteed effective, if murder was what our killer had in mind.”
“So do you think this was a crime of
passion?” Kallik asked. He’s clearly been reading mystery novels.
“It would appear to be spur of the moment,”
I agreed. “Perhaps grabbing a weapon close to hand.”
Ahnah looked at the ground and shuffled her
feet. “It’s a steak knife from the dining room,” she said. I nodded.
“Steak is only served on Tuesdays,” she
noted.
I immediately understood the implication.
“So, either someone took this knife from the dining room on Tuesday, the night
before the murder, or someone with access to the kitchen grabbed it yesterday.
Either way, it looks premeditated.”
Now, it was Ahnah’s turn to nod.
“So why would someone want Eira Winter
dead?” I asked, more to myself than the group.
“She doesn’t sound like a nice lady,” Willie
said. We all agreed, but we all wondered if that was enough for someone to want
her dead.
In my experience, it wasn’t.
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