Cherry Beach

"This is one of the best Canadian crime novels of this or any year . . . Toronto now takes its place with Los Angeles, New York, and Boston as a character in the action and it’s great."—Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail

Longlisted for the 2026 Toronto Book Awards

A brutal murder exposes secret real estate deals, a corrupt police force, and the dark heart of a city simmering with unrest.

When two girls are found murdered in a rundown Toronto highrise, Jamieson Abel and his partner are first on the scene. Abel is a law school dropout turned police detective chronically at odds with his colleagues and perpetually on the brink of being terminated, and Davis is the department’s only female officer of colour. Both understand their being partnered as a form of banishment, but when the details of the murder go public at the start of an excruciatingly hot summer, they find themselves thrust into the centre of a front page investigation that will bring to a head the city’s long history of shady real estate deals and racist disenfranchisement.

Intricately plotted and brilliantly layered, Cherry Beach is a gripping literary crime novel that examines class, race, and corruption in the most multicultural city in the world.