Mysteries set in Ontario
Discover mystery stories set in the beautiful province of Ontario
Books Set in Ontario (148)
Set in 1929, Rosie Ryan dreams of escaping Toronto’s rough Ward neighborhood by securing a position as a chambermaid at…
A gripping dual-timeline novel about the mysterious death of an indomitable female papyrologist during an archaeological…
When talented interior designer Minna Halonen returns to her idyllic northern hometown after decades away, she's ready for…
In 2025, Hamilton, Ontario is plagued by abductions orchestrated by criminals seeking to form a “perfect family.” Danny…
When Kausar Khan decided to move back to Toronto to be closer to her family, she didn't expect to have another murder investigation…
Drew Benson has a secret. She gets visions, something she hasn’t tapped into since she was a teenager, when her late aunt,…
On a weekend getaway for their true-crime book club, four women retreat to the sole cottage on isolated Snakebite Island.…
Widows and Orphans
by Elizabeth Renzetti, Kate Hilton
Part of: Quill & Packet Mystery
Cozy, Mystery, Small Town, Women Sleuths
Journalist Cat Conway is looking forward to an easy assignment covering a major wellness and self-actualization summit at…
After her husband’s unexpected death twelve months earlier, Kausar Khan never thought she’d receive another phone call as…
The night before the long-awaited return of the Highwater Revival Music Festival, an explosion shatters the calm—and among…
When Anya Kurchenko, a woman recently arrived in Ottawa from Ukraine, is found murdered in an obscure alleyway, the only…
When the “Society for Transcendent Understanding of Past-Life Identification and Discovery” rolls into town, Mason Valentine…
A chilling murder, a web of lies, and a legacy that won't stay buried. When RCMP officer Matt Brennan inherits Lonely Lake…
When centenarian Senator Miles “The Tank” Valentine meets an electrifying end at his own resort, Highclere Inn & Carriage…
Bury the Lead
by Elizabeth Renzetti, Kate Hilton
Part of: Quill & Packet Mystery
Cozy, Mystery, Small Town, Women Sleuths
A big-city journalist joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country and finds a community full of secrets … and…
Born Kathleen to an immigrant Irish farming family in southern Ontario, Kit McNair has been a troublesome changeling since,…
A heist, a town on edge, and a secret buried beneath the surface collide in this tense installment. Grave consequences await…
All Ethan Baines wants is to get on with his life and find a farm where he can operate an organic co-op farm. Little does…
A new murder grips Lake Pines, and everyone is a suspect. As the investigation deepens, long‑standing tensions and hidden…
The newspapers have reported on the arrest of two Black teenagers in a burglary, but did the pair actually commit the crime?…
Patrick Bird, police academy burnout turned PI, works divorce cases, using his camera to catch the unfaithful and the lonely…
Butterfly Kills
Part of: Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery
Indigenous, Police Procedural, Suspense, Urban
Jacques Rouleau has moved to Kingston to look after his father and take up the position of head of the town’s Criminal Investigations…
Officer Kala Stonechild, who has left her Northern Ontario detachment to join a specialized Ottawa crime unit, is tasked…
One body. Several suspects. A secret capable of destroying lives. As investigators peel back layers of deception, they discover…
In a world still recovering from the War to End All Wars and the Spanish Influenza pandemic that killed fifty million people…
After nearly thirty years behind bars for a murder he insists he didn’t commit, a man returns to Lake Pines—only for new…
A recent death threatens to unravel a carefully woven web of lies. Echoes of guilt reverberate through the town as investigators…
In the cold Toronto winter of 1895, the unclad body of a young woman is found naked and frozen in a quiet laneway. Acting…
Ottawa lawyer and victims’ advocate Camilla MacPhee has finally agreed to elope to Cape Breton with her long-time partner,…
An unidentified victim and international secrets thrust Lake Pines into a deadly conspiracy. Investigators must navigate…
Even the most innocent residents of Lake Pines carry secrets—and one of those secrets has turned lethal. As the past resurfaces,…
Sidelined to administrative duties, Inspector Michael Green misses the thrill of the chase. So when his daughter Hannah,…
Stinging deaths aren't uncommon in the summertime, but when Henry Wiest turns up stung to death at an Indian reservation,…
A regatta at dawn turns deadly when a body is discovered, sending shockwaves through the quiet town of Lake Pines. As secrets…
After weeks of torture at the hands of Syria's secret police, the bombing of his villa in the ancient city of Aleppo, and…
Closing Time
Part of: Stonechild and Rouleau Mystery
Indigenous, Police Procedural, Suspense, Women Sleuths
It’s late summer and a restless Officer Kala Stonechild has taken her foster niece, Dawn, on a canoe trip at Pine Hollow…
A haunting crime from the past resurfaces during Lake Pines’ harsh winter. As temperatures drop, tensions rise, revealing…
A corpse found at Deception Bay becomes the town’s worst nightmare as clues point toward a killer who knows how to hide…
When ominous signs and a murder coincide, Lake Pines is thrown into chaos. A flock of crows becomes an eerie symbol as investigators…
A DNA test and a cold case collide, pulling Lake Pines into a storm of revelations. As identities are questioned and loyalties…
Charlotte’s boss at T. Gilmore and Associates takes off on a mysterious trip to Europe, leaving Charlotte in charge of the…
Detective Toby, our favorite feline sleuth, is upset at who and what he sees moving in next door, where his friend, Emma,…
It's July 1936 and Toronto is under a record-breaking heat wave. Charlotte Frayne is the junior associate in a two-person…
Tulla Murphy's life has unraveled. Spurred by a loss that forces her to rethink all her plans, she retreats to the town…
Emma Gale has never escaped her past ghosts, and when she finds herself alone, her brother imprisoned for his crimes, Emma…
Camden Gale and his sister, Emma, have had a tough life. Camden has become paranoid/delusional about everything and everyone…
David McKenna lies dying in a Kingston hospital, his children gathered from across the country to say a final goodbye. But…
Jack, a retired police officer, decides he and Toby, his oversized orange tabby, need a holiday after their last big case…
Just when Dylan Maples is settling down after last summer's trip to Ireland's Eye, the parental units are at it again—planning…
Janwar Gupta, a brilliant but neurotic medical student intern, has a patient die under suspicious circumstances during his…
In November 1917, Detective Murdoch investigates a series of murders in Toronto’s Ward. His son, Jack, recently returned…
English teacher, mother, wife, and convicted child predator Jane Thompson has made parole and she has a plan. She begins…
When Adele Delaney and her daughter Violet go missing, Jacques Rouleau is called upon to investigate. However, struggling…
When Saul Tepperman, a member of Ontario’s B'nai Shalom synagogue, reaches out to his childhood acquaintance Benny Cooperman,…
Niagara Falls is overrun with Hollywood types shooting a film, but private investigator Benny Cooperman isn't scouting for…
Benny Cooperman is camped out at a Petawawa fishing lodge, tasked with guarding a famous televangelist hiding from a pending…
It’s February in Ontario, and Benny Cooperman’s private investigation business is as frozen as the landscape—until Muriel…
When Myrna Yates visits private investigator Benny Cooperman to look into her husband Chester’s suspected infidelity, what…
There are some pretty nasty bikers disrupting the façade of serenity of Murphy's Harbor, and Reid must find a way to make…
Dead in the Water
by Ted Wood
Part of: Reid Bennett Mystery
Hard-Boiled, Police Procedural, Small Town
After his life was destroyed because of his efforts to prevent a rape, Reid Bennett relocated to Murphy's Harbor, a quaint…
Ellis Portal has resigned from solving mysteries. Or so he thinks. When a profound personal tragedy propels him into a puzzling…
When gold is found in the mountains of Canada, it brings a rush of prospectors, pilots, and men looking to get rich quick.…
Reid Bennett hits the mean streets of Toronto again. Because of his expertise, he (and his German shepherd, Sam, of course)…
During the Ice Festival, there is a sudden blackout and the Queen of the Ice Festival disappears; in fact she has been kidnapped!…
Twenty years ago, a raw and impressionable Detective Michael Green helped convict a young professor for the murder of an…
Unable to just let his job go completely, Reid unwisely takes an assignment on his way north to investigate police corruption…
When the Killing Starts
by Ted Wood
Part of: Reid Bennett Mystery
Hard-Boiled, Police Procedural, Urban
Reid Bennett, police chief of tiny Murphy's Harbour in Canada, is looking forward to a month's vacation. He plans to spend…
No longer on the force, Karen Grant is now working as a journalist—and one of her two sources has just been murdered in…
In 1858, a young woman on her honeymoon is abducted and taken across the border from Canada and sold into slavery. Thirty-eight…
Epidemic investigator Dr. Zol Szabo and his team are called to a panic’stricken high school in the heart of Ontario’s tobacco…
In his forties, the Reverend Charles Howard still cut an impressive figure. A married Presbyterian minister in Toronto’s…
He may have been cleared of murder charges, but that doesn’t mean Steve Nastos’s troubles are over. Some of his former colleagues…
Zilla Trott is pouring her cat some chamomile tea when the drifter appears in her kitchen. He is grubby and crude—not at…
When Jenson Thorbisher-Freep announces an amateur theatrical contest, the women in the Grub-and-Stake gardening club race…
When word gets out that Dittany Monk, the sleuthing gardener of Lobelia Falls, is expecting twins, every knitter in town…
The High, a band with a few hit songs in the late 1970s, have reunited to play the nostalgia circuit at casinos. But for…
At first this newly-dead body sprawled in a motel parking lot looks run of the mill; the corpse has a big boot print on…
In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Observing them…
Until recently, Steve Nastos was a respected Toronto detective and a member of the sexual assault unit. Now he’s in custody,…
In an affluent city perched on Ontario’s Niagara Escarpment, residents begin turning up on the pathologist’s autopsy table…
Though Zol and his team have investigated every centimetre of Camelot Lodge, a residence for healthy seniors blessed with…
Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery,…
Inspector Green explores a web of betrayal and deceit. In the dead of night, the phone rings in the missing persons unit…
A year after the death of his beloved but troubled wife Catherine, John has moved into a new, but very humid, condo. He…
Vernard ‘Get’ McGetty is back from serving in Afghanistan, back dealing drugs in Detroit and looking to move up with his…
One of Canada’s best-loved sleuths returns in her sixth hair-raising adventure. Victims’ advocate Camilla MacPhee is following…
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is recovering from a bad year, and a traumatic back operation that has left her in the…
An old man is found beaten to death on a street corner in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Initially, the killing appears to be a…
The calling
Part of: Hazel Micallef
Paranormal, Police Procedural, Suspense, Thriller, Women Sleuths
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has lived all her days in the small town of Port Dundas and is now making her way toward…
Peril at the World's Biggest Hockey Tournament
Part of: The Screech Owls
Hockey, Juvenile, Middle Grade, Mystery
The Screech Owls have come to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, to play in the world’s biggest minor league hockey tournament…
A seventeen-year-old sets out to meet her secret lover by an Ottawa waterfall. Three days later, her body washes up in the…
Memories Are Murder
by Lou Allin
Part of: Belle Palmer Mystery
Cozy, Indigenous, Rural, Women Sleuths
Belle Palmers old high-school boyfriend rents a property on her road. Zoologist Gary Myers is studying the behaviour of…
After thirteen-year-old Agnes Fisher faints at school, her teacher, the young and still idealistic Amy Slade, is shocked…
Blackfly Season
by Giles Blunt
Part of: John Cardinal and Lise Delorme
Indigenous, Police Procedural, Thriller
According to detective John Cardinal, the truly diabolical thing about blackflies is their stealthy silence; there is no…
Autumn has arrived in Algonquin Bay, and with it an unusual spate of suicides. The most shocking yet is Cardinal’s wife…
Honour among men
Part of: Inspector Green Mystery
Police Procedural, Political, Psychological, Suspense
Inspector Green is coping with an office job, still eager to get back into the day-to-day fray of policing. His chance comes…
Northern Ontario realtor Belle Palmer is showing the lakefront mansion of a prominent businesswoman when she discovers the…
Remembrance Day is a proud day for Camilla MacPhee’s good friend, Mrs. Violet Parnell, one of five thousand Canadian women…
In the quiet Canadian town of Algonquin Bay, a frozen body has been found in an abandoned mine shaft. She is soon identified…
The fifth and final episode in Aubert's prize-winning series finds once-disgraced Toronto attorney Ellis Portal readmitted…
Women rich and poor come to her, desperate and in dire need of help – and discretion. Dolly Merishaw is a midwife and an…
In the third Belle Palmer mystery, Belle takes her friend and employee on a snowshoe trek. Miriam MacDonald brings her spoiled…
A gruesome discovery in the wilderness north of Algonquin Bay leads detectives John Cardinal and Lisa Delorme to a remote…
It’s Labour Day, Camilla’s favourite weekend of the year. She’s planning to relax and ponder what’s happening in her relationship…
Accident or suicide? That’s the simple question put to Inspector Michael Green when a derelict stranger falls to his death…
In this prequel to the earlier books in the series, Ellis Portal, the disgraced former judge turned sleuth, is taken back…
The Screech Owls are all grown up. Ten years have passed, and Travis, Sarah, Nish, and their friends have gone theirseparate…
Murdoch’s life and work overlap tragically. His sister, who long ago fled to a convent to escape their abusive father, is…
t’s summer, and Rachel Highboy, Jesse’s hockey-playing cousin from James Bay, has come to Tamarack to join the Screech Owls…
Blackflies are murder
by Lou Allin
Part of: Belle Palmer Mystery
Cozy, Indigenous, Rural, Women Sleuths
In the sequel to Northern Winters Are Murder, it’s now high summer in Northern Ontario, where everyone is bear bait, even…
In this final installment of the Charlie Salter mystery series, a sixty-something Salter struggles with the realities of…
In the third Camilla MacPhee Mystery, Camilla’s looking forward to cutting loose at Ottawa’s Bluesfest, the huge open-air…
When an old man dies a seemingly natural death in a parking lot, only Inspector Michael Green finds it suspicious. A search…
Murdoch becomes involved with the apparent suicide of Constable Oliver Wicken – a man who was the sole support of his mother…
A serious of seemingly routine deaths by exposure in Toronto are revealed to have a much more sinister origin when all the…
Disgraced former judge and uncoventional sleuth Ellis Portal is recruited by the Toronto police to catch the killer of a…
In the second Camilla MacPhee mystery, it’s now forty below in Canada’s capital, but victims’ advocate Camilla is feeling…
Ottawa homicide inspector Michael Green is absolutely obsessed with his job, a condition which has almost ruined his marriage…
The Screech Owls have come to Ottawa to play in the Little Stanley Cup peewee tournament. This relaxed summer event honours…
Summer’s coming and school will soon be out! The Screech Owls would love to keep playing hockey, but Muck has a better idea.…
Northern winters are murder
by Lou Allin
Part of: Belle Palmer Mystery
Cozy, Private Investigator, Women Sleuths
Another freezing winter descends in seeming peace upon the Northern Ontario lake where realtor Belle Palmer lives genteelly…
Camilla MacPhee is the black sheep of her perfect, blonde family, although she runs a law office specializing in Justice…
Ellis Portal had once been an esteemed judge. Now, he lives as a vagrant in the wilderness that runs through the heart of…
When a phone call from Nish gets Travis out of bed one bright winter’s morning, it looks as if it’s going to be the best…
Strange attacks in Ottawa spark rumours of vampires. Tom investigates the unsettling incidents, discovering a criminal scheme…
Benny is, as always, desperate for paying work, but he flatly refuses an invitation to work for Grantham’s most notorious…
The Night They Stole the Stanley Cup
Part of: The Screech Owls
Hockey, Juvenile, Middle Grade, Mystery
Travis, Nish, and the rest of the Screech Owls have come to Toronto for the biggest hockey tournament of their lives – only…
With the boys of baseball out on strike, Kate Henry finds herself with time on her hands. Passing on the chance to sit in…
In Death by Degrees, Inspector Charlie Salter investigates the murder of a dean at Bathurst Community College, a case that…
Charlie Salter investigates the murder of actor Alec Hunter, who was found dead in a sleazy hotel. The investigation reveals…
It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny's janitor, Kogan, is too preoccupied with the death of his girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge,…
While vacationing with his family on Prince Edward Island, Toronto Detective Inspector Charlie Salter finds himself assisting…
Spring training takes a grim turn when sports journalist Kate Henry and a fellow reporter find a local freelancer, Lucy…
Final Cut by Eric Wright follows Inspector Charlie Salter as he investigates a film set plagued by sabotage, including a…
Special Affairs Inspector Charlie Salter and Chief Investigator Sergeant Mel Pickett are tasked with the sensitive murder…
Benny Cooperman is sure that toxic waste isn’t something you should spend too much time thinking about—it just isn’t good…
Inspector Charlie Salter investigates a string of anonymous threatening letters sent to Yorkville merchants, a case that…
As the baseball season heats up, a serial killer stalks young boys on the streets of Toronto. While sportswriter Kate Henry’s…
For the first time in their history, the Toronto Titans are on a winning streak and headed for the World Series—a dream…
Benny Cooperman, Grantham’s soft-boiled private eye, finds himself mixed up in the art world. More out of water a fish can’t…
Anyone growing up in Lobelia Falls is taught to learn the elegant, ancient, and occasionally deadly art of shooting with…
The Grub-and-Stakers gardening club has traditionally limited its activities to serving tea and gossiping about wildflowers,…
In The Man Who Changed His Name, Inspector Charlie Salter investigates the murder of Nancy Cowell, a woman who met her killer…
Death in the Old Country is a mystery novel by Eric Wright featuring Toronto Police Inspector Charlie Salter. While vacationing…
In "Smoke Detector," Inspector Charlie Salter investigates the death of an antiques dealer who died in a fire later proven…
Inspector Charlie Salter, a detective with the Toronto Police Department, is assigned to solve the murder of Professor David…
Tom and Liz explore the mysterious halls of Casa Loma, uncovering clues to a long‑hidden treasure. Secret passages, old…