Crime author Winona Kent has taken on a mysterious new role – just as she prepares to release her latest novel.
The New Westminster resident was recently elected chair of Crime Writers of Canada.
“I'm quite excited about being elected the chair,” she said. “Although I've been their B.C. rep for the past six years and the vice-chair for the past two years, I've never really done anything quite like this before.”
Before retiring in 2019 to become a full-time writer, Kent worked as a program assistant at the School of Population and Public Health at UBC for 15 years.
“Who knew all those admin skills were going to come in so handy five years down the line?” she said.
Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) is a national non-profit organization for Canadian mystery and crime writers, associated professionals, and others with a serious interest in Canadian crime writing. Its mission is to promote Canadian crime writing and to raise the profile of Canadian crime writers with readers, reviewers, librarians, booksellers, and media.
Each year, the organization hosts its Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence for authors of mystery and crime fiction and nonfiction.
The new role comes just as the Quayside resident is preparing to launch her latest Jason Davey mystery, Bad Boy. Bad Boy, the fifth book in Kent’s professional musician/amateur sleuth Jason Davey series, is being released on Sept. 26
Kent describes this novel as a “well-scrambled” musical mystery, saying it falls somewhere between a soft-boiled and hard-boiled mystery, and is served with an added dash of noir.
“Fresh from a 34-day, 18-city tour of England, professional musician and amateur sleuth Jason Davey accepts an invitation from a fan, Marcus Merritt, to meet at Level 72 of The Shard, in London, to sign one of his band's programs. Marcus hands him the booklet, then leaps to his death from the open viewing platform,” said a synopsis of the book. “Thus begins a week-long quest, during which Jason is tasked with retrieving a stolen collection of scores by England’s most famous composer, Sir Edward Elgar.”
Continues the synopsis: “Marcus shared Elgar's love of eccentric puzzles and games, and the challenging clues he's assembled for Jason seem to mirror the 14 themes in Elgar's renowned Enigma Variations. Jason's journey takes him to Derbyshire and then back to London, and a four-hour walking tour of Soho's lost music venues where, in Denmark Street, he faces a life-threatening battle with two adversaries: a treacherous Russian gangster who is also hunting for the stolen collection, and Marcus's sister – who holds the key to a decades-old mystery involving a notorious London crime lord's missing daughter.”
Kent, who was born in London, England but grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, is the author of 12 books, including Ten Stories That Worried My Mother (an anthology of short stories) and five current Jason Davey novels. For more details, visit Kent’s website.
