When a man is found stabbed and floating beneath the cliffs of the Newfoundland coast, the small outpost of Hampden is swept up in a storm of suspicion and paranoia. Grief-stricken and still struggling to cope with the death of one of their own a year earlier, the troubled Now family are among the first to be suspected of the killing. As the mystery around the murdered man unfolds, the lies spiral, the stakes rise, and the once close-knit town becomes a prison that no one can escape. The third novel in Donna Morrissey's Now family saga, a dark, atmospheric novel about the aftermath of a murder in a claustrophobic rural community. Winner of the 2017 Arthur Ellis Awards for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing and the 2017 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. source
Scene
“He looked up, seeing two men in a boat paddling offshore from the outcropping of rock and cliff that blocked his view of Hampden. He'd been climbing around here since he was a kid, shortcutting it to Hampden.”
Morrissey's verbatim opening names Hampden — a real White Bay community — as the proximate town for the Now family.
Donna Morrissey, The Fortunate Brother (Viking, 2016), excerpt on CBC Books — source
