August 22, 2022
On a cold day in January 2010, Jess Novak, the narrator of this cleverly plotted series launch from Tector (The Honeybee Emeralds), settles into her Ottawa office for her first assignment at Canada’s Dominion Archives, where she has a one-year probationary contract. She is to read and catalogue business documents belonging to the estate of Henry Jarvis, a former cabinet minister. Hidden inside the cover of a ledger she’s examining is a letter dated Sept. 20, 1914, to Victoria Jarvis in Alberta from Jeremy Crawford in Paris. After determining that Victoria was Henry’s niece and Jeremy a minor painter, Jess decides to search for more information with an eye to writing a scholarly paper that would secure her a permanent position at the archive. While in the art vault at the archives’ conservation facility, she finds the body of Paul Thibodeau, one of the facility’s commissionaires. Was the killer one of her new colleagues? Could the death be connected to Jess’s research? Letters between Victoria and Jeremy provide lively counterpoint to Jess’s dangerous search for a long-missing Rembrandt painting related to their correspondence. Readers will eagerly look forward to Jess’s further adventures.