Monty Collins and Father Burke mysteries

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...

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 Collins 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.

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 childalert Monty that his client iskeeping 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...

After a woman says she has seen the Virgin Mary in the churchyard, a talk show host arrives in town and clashes with Father Burke, but when a body appears at the supposed apparition site and the talk show host is implicated, Collins takes him on as a client.

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....

"Father 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...