AMAZON BESTSELLER! Colorado Gold MYSTERY AWARD WINNER. Daphne du Maurier Suspense Finalist.

A man copes any way he can after killing his only son.

His team believes he’s calm and Zen. His boss finds him obsessive. Suspects think him gorgeous but dangerous. They’re all right.

Chief Inspector Gray James is sculpting the remembered likeness of his small son when he receives the call – a faceless corpse is found hanging by the choppy river, swirls of snow and sand rolling like tumbleweeds.

Montreal glitters: the cobbled streets slippery with ice, and the mighty St. Lawrence jetting eastward past the city. One by one, someone is killing the founders of a booming medical tech startup – propelling Gray into a downward spiral that shatters his hard-earned peace, that risks his very life, that threatens to force him to care and face what he has shunned all along: his hand in the storm.

SOME STORMS RAGE INSIDE AND OUT

Something is brewing in the quaint and peaceful coastal town of Searock – edged between the Pacific Ocean and the Coast Mountains near Vancouver. The town of Chief Inspector Gray James’s youth and where it all began – where he had a hand in his son’s death.

But healing has to wait because THE STITCHER is back after a fifteen-year absence. And the victim – lips sutured shut with medical nylon – is found lying spread-eagled in a nearby Body Farm.

With threats launched against Gray’s family, he must solve the case before a storm blasts the village, before his estranged wife takes from him what matters most, before his most guarded secret is finally revealed. 

HIS TEAM THINKS HIM ZEN. SUSPECTS FIND HIM GORGEOUS YET DANGEROUS. THEY'RE BOTH RIGHT.

Chief Inspector Gray James is enjoying his morning cappuccino by the river when a floating dock jostles--and he must plunge into the icy water to save a woman tied beneath the dock: her mouth duct-taped, her eyes wide, her hair pulsating like a living thing.

Montreal’s cafés and cobblestone streets harbor secrets. One by one, someone is attacking the residents of a riverfront mansion by using the "DEADLY 3's" (three minutes without air; three days without water; three weeks without food).

But can Gray save the quaint waterfront community from a relentless killer? Can he win his concurrent murder trial in Vancouver for allegedly being the "Stitcher"-- a killer who once sutured together the lips of his victims with medical nylon? Can he survive the storms all around him and break free from what grips him the most...and holds his hand in the flame?