As 1995 dawns in the North of Ireland, Belfast is a city of army patrols, bombed-out buildings, and "peace walls" segregating one community from the other. But the IRA has called a ceasefire. So, it's as good a time as any for Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke to visit the city: Monty to do a short gig in a law firm, and Brennan to reconnect with family. And it's a good time for Brennan's cousin Ronan to lay down arms and campaign for election in a future peacetime government.But the past is never past in Belfast, and it rises up to haunt them all: a man goes off a bridge on a dark, lonely road; a rogue IRA enforcer is shot; and a series of car bombs remains an unsolved crime. The trouble is compounded by a breakdown in communication: Brennan knows nothing about the secrets in a file on Monty's desk. And Monty has no idea what lies behind a late-night warning from the IRA. With a smoking gun at the center of it all, Brennan and Monty are on a collision course and will...

The latest mystery from a two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis AwardFather Brennan Burke is struggling, and he's been coping the only way he knows how: self-medicating with drink. He's barely managing, but his troubles intensify when the body of one of his parishioners washes up on the coast of Halifax.Meika Keller came to Canada after escaping past a checkpoint in the Berlin Wall. An army colonel is charged with her murder, and defence lawyer Monty argues that Meika's death was a suicide, which is the last thing Father Burke wants to hear. Guilty of neglecting his duties as a priest when Meika needed him most, Brennan feels compelled to uncover whatever instigated her cry for help and led to her death.The story takes us from the historic Navy town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the history-laden city of Berlin, as Brennan and his brother Terry head to Germany in search of answers. And while Brennan will stop at nothing to find what, or who, is responsible for...

The ninth mystery in a series that "gets better with every book" (Globe and Mail)Twelve-year-old Bonnie MacDonald — the beloved stepdancing, fiddling youngest member of Cape Breton's famed Clan Donnie band — vanishes after a family party. There was no stranger spotted lurking around, but no one thinks for one minute that Bonnie ran away. Maura MacNeil, cousin to Clan Donnie, offers her husband's legal services to the family as the police search for the missing girl. But fame attracts some strange characters and Clan Donnie has groupies. So, it turns out, does lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins.Monty and Maura's daughter, Normie, is much closer to the action as she gets to know her cousins, learns things she wishes she never had, and has nightmares — visions? — that bring her no closer to finding Bonnie. Her spooky great-grandmother makes no secret of the fact that she senses the presence of evil in their village — the kind of evil RCMP Sergeant...

A rich man and a poor man are found dead of gunshot wounds outside a seedy bar on Barrington Street. The police declare it a murder-suicide, but bluesman/lawyer Monty Collins suspects it's a double murder. Helped by his friend, Father Brennan Burke, and hindered by his femme fatale law partner, Felicia Morgan, Monty explores the dark side of Halifax society—hookers, drug addicts, boozers, gamblers, and people desperate to cover up a series of parties that got way out of hand. Monty’s investigations lead him to a ruthless businessman with street connections, a preacher who’s been seen cruising for young people, and an oddball psychotherapist who may have overstepped the boundaries of therapy with more than one person in the case. A threat of blackmail and turmoil with his estranged wife Maura have Monty singing the blues, lashing out at his closest friends, and spending far too much time in the bars of Halifax.Review"Highly  recommended."  —Library Journal"The writing is lean, linear, and concise . . . [the] understated treatment of setting gives credence to the theory that less detail can often mean more mood. . . . However, it is perhaps Emery's use of character dialogue that gives the book its weight, masterfully chronicling Collins's descent into his own personal underworld."  —Atlantic Books Today"Emery makes it easy to root for Monty, who solves not only the mystery that pays the bills, but also the one that tugs at his heart."  —Quill and QuireAbout the AuthorAnne Emery is a graduate of Dalhousie Law School who has worked as a lawyer, a legal affairs reporter, and a researcher. She is the author of Cecilian Vespers, Children in the Morning, Obit, and Sign of the Cross, winner of the 2006 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

It’s 1989. The Troubles are raging in Ireland, bombs exploding in England. In this prequel to the Collins-Burke series, Father Brennan Burke is home in New York when news of his sister’s arrest in London sends him flying across the ocean. The family troubles deepen when Brennan’s cousin Conn is charged with the murder of a Special Branch detective and suspected in a terrorist plot against Westminster Abbey. The Burkes come under surveillance by the murdered cop’s partner and are caught in a tangle of buried family memories.

Lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins is used to defending murderers - and occasionally investigating murders himself - but he's never come up against anything like the case of Reinhold Schellenberg, a world-renowned German theologian who has been found dead on the altar of an old church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Saint Cecilia's day. The controversial priest, once a top insider in the Vatican, was known to provoke strong feelings in Catholics of all ideological stripes, and�now those feelings have overflowed with horrifying results. At least Monty knows where to look for clues; his friend Father Brennan Burke has just opened a choir school at the church, and the students provide an international cast of suspects - including a flamboyant Sicilian priest, an eccentric English monk, a disgruntled American, a Vatican enforcer, a church lady with a history of violence, and, most perplexing of all, a police officer from the former East Berlin.

When spray-painted graffiti appears on the wall of Christy Burke's pub indicating that there's a killer on the premises, his grandson, Father Brennan Burke, is asked to investigate the vandalism. Though not at all keen on probing into the lives of the bar's clientele, he has little choice once a body is found on the property. Issuing orders from a cell in Mountjoy Prison, the pub's current owner wants the problem solved without the police anywhere near his building. Assisted by his pal Monty Collins and fellow priest Michael O'Flaherty, Brennan begins to uncover dark secrets worth killing for in the lives of the pub regulars. In addition to the events surrounding the pub, Brennan's murder investigation becomes overshadowed by ominous events in Belfast that may soon come home to roost in Dublin. Sinister figures are spotted in and around the pub, people are being followed in the street, and Brennan comes to possess explosive information that he cannot reveal to security forces. The...

Monty Collins is a sharp-tongued public defender who just wants to represent an upstanding character for a change. A priest with something to hide isn't quite what he had hoped for, but when the literate, arrogant, and tight-lipped Father Brennan Burke is implicated in the strange murder of a young woman, Monty doesn't just take the case - the case takes him. When Burke won't come clean, Monty is forced to play private detective, traveling into his client's past. Things look good for the case until another body is found, marked with the same telltale sign as the first. Burke keeps mum, alternate suspects are ruled out, and the trial looks like it might be lost before deliberation. As if it couldn't get any worse, Monty's wisecracking ex-wife enters the picture, and she seems to know more about Burke than Monty does. Evidence and coincidence pile up, leading to a revelation neither Monty nor the reader see coming.

When Beau Delaney, the Halifax hotshot whose exploits are the subject of a new Hollywood film, is charged with the murder of his wife Peggy, it's lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins who takes the case. But when Beau's family dynamics and the appearance of a mysterious child alert Monty that his client is keeping secrets, others join in to help keep Beau from a life in prison. Monty's pal, Father Brennan Burke, has a hand in the investigation, as does Monty's estranged wife, Maura. Watching all this is Normie, Monty and Maura's daughter, who has the gift of second sight. When she starts having visions that involve Beau, she can't tell whether they reflect something he's done in the past--or something he might do in the future. It then becomes clear that Normie and Monty must rely on each other to discover the truth about Peggy's death.

In the seventh book of the deftly written Collins-Burke Mystery series, Father Brennan Burke's patience is pushed to the limit when a young woman announces to the world that the Virgin Mary has appeared to her in the churchyard, and hordes of pilgrims, souvenir hawkers, and reporters converge on the scene. But, as unwelcome as these guests may be, they pale in comparison to yet another aggravation in Father Burke's life, a controversial talk show host who clashes with Burke upon arriving in town. Events take a darker turn when a body is found at the apparition site, and the talk show host is picked up for the murder. There is enough aggravation to go around, as Monty Collins learns when he takes on the loud-mouthed TV man as a client. Monty and Brennan both have a stake in uncovering the truth about the murder, and they both learn disturbing things about the accused man and other suspects in the case. Neither man can talk to the other about what he has learned, however, due to...

Declan Burke fled Ireland forty years ago and never looked back. Now settled in New York, he thinks he's put the old country behind him, until he reads the obituary of one Cathal Murphy. The obituary, he sees at once, is not about Murphy at all. It is a coded indictment of Burke's own life. And an announcement of his impending death. Halifax lawyer Monty Collins investigates the obit with its allusions to Burke's IRA past. Collins gets no help from Burke, who — good soldier to the end — keeps the silence of the grave. But Burke's denial becomes harder to maintain following a burst of gunfire at a family wedding. The shooting brings another old soldier onto the field: Leo Killeen, the commanding officer of Burke's former battalion in Dublin. But he also has secrets to protect. When a body is found in a rundown Brooklyn flat, Collins wonders just how far Killeen will go to keep those secrets under wraps. From the farms of Ireland to the tenements of New York City,...