Contemplation of a Crime

Buddhist butler and reluctant investigator Helen Thorpe bands together with her fellow butler school graduates to rescue her very wealthy employer and his son in this new mystery by bestselling author Susan Juby. Butler Helen Thorpe is not one to judge, but the participants in Close Encounters for Global Healing are astonishingly unpleasant. The five-day program brings together people from across the political spectrum with the goal of helping them bridge their ideological and personal differences. Helen and her employer, Mr. Levine, have come to Side Island to assist David, his youngest son, who is facilitating the course. The motley assortment of participants includes a burned-out environmental activist, an internet troll, a clueless consumerist, an alleged white nationalist and a man who was arrested at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. No one seems interested in a civil conversation, much less global healing, and each person has shown up with their own secret agenda. No rapprochement between the warring, or at least endlessly bickering, parties seems possible. But when something deadly happens, they must learn to work together. First, they have to figure out who among them can be trusted.

SUSAN JUBY is the award-winning, bestselling author of A Meditation on Murder and Mindful of Murder, which debuted at number one on the independent bookstores bestseller chart and has been shortlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour. She is also the author of Getting the Girl, Another Kind of Cowboy, The Woefield Poultry Collective, the bestselling Alice series, and Republic of Dirt, which won the Leacock Medal. Susan currently lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, and their dogs, who are convinced they could have lucrative careers as social media stars.