Ian Wallace, a
criminologist teaching at a small Annapolis Valley college, joins Constable
Lauren Martin in her investigation into the circumstances surrounding the
disappearance of an enigmatic and apparently friendless student. An unusual
diary provides clues to what may have happened to her. The more they learn
about the missing student, people and circumstances turn out to be not what
they appeared. Truth proves elusive.
About
Face is an often-tense police mystery with humour, romance, and
social commentary.
The cover portrays the
transformation of a college student from an innocent girl to a woman of
experience and knowledge. In a plot twisted with contradictions, she goes
missing.
It was created by
Tony’s son, Devon Thomson, who graduated from the Nova Scotia College of
Art and Design in 2015. He currently lives in Toronto working for an IT company
and continues to pursue his art.
The
book is available through Moose House Publications: Catalogue.
On
Amazon.ca
Chapters,
Bayers Lake, Halifax, NS
Bookmark,
5686 Spring Garden Rd., Halifax, NS
Indigo
Spirit, Sunnyside Mall, Bedford. NS
Coles
Book Store, County Fair Mall, New Minas, NS
Hennigar’s Farm Market, Greenwich, NS
Mad Hatter
Bookstore, 213 St. George St., Annapolis Royal, NS
Endless
Shores Books, 279 Granville St., Bridgetown NS
Or,
Send a
message to tony.thomson@acadiau.ca
Common
folklore says everyone has a novel waiting to emerge. For decades, I wanted to
write mine. Eventually, I started typing. The result was About Face: A Mystery, and I’m pleased
and still somewhat surprised to say that Moose House Publications in Annapolis
Royal, NS is publishing it in September.
I am especially grateful
to my wife, Heather Frenette, who edited several versions of the book and made
important contributions to several scenes. She has an important stake in the
novel.
I’ve read mystery novels
sporadically throughout my life. As the novel emerged under my keyboard, I
altered some of the elements typical of the genre. It’s not just another
murder mystery.
Between 1989 and 1994, I was a
member of a research group on community policing in Nova Scotia’s
Annapolis Valley. Besides formal interviews and surveys, my role included
observing the day-to-day work of members of an RCMP detachment and officers in
small town police departments. As my involvement deepened, I became a
participant observer in training sessions, searches, interrogations, car
chases, and court appearances, becoming acquainted with the work routine of
rural cops and the thoughts they were willing to share with me. The results of
the data gathering appeared in several Atlantic Institute of Criminology
reports, which were shared with the agencies involved.
Writing About Face
provided an opportunity to tell a story that included memories of my
experiences with the police as well as of my years teaching in five
universities. The protagonist of my first-person mystery novel teaches
criminology at a local college (in a fictional county in the Annapolis Valley),
who is occasionally invited to work with the local police. Necessarily, the
characters, settings, and occurrences are fictional or fictionalized. Rural
policing has changed over time, especially in technology, but many issues I
discuss in the novel continue to be relevant.
Tony
Thomson was born a Protestant in a predominantly Catholic part of the
Hydrostone District of Halifax’s North End. Much of his youth was spent
at Lawrencetown Beach where his parents had a small cottage. The beach became a
central part of his childhood. Despite not learning to swim, he enjoyed diving
under and over the cold North Atlantic waves.
His father built a permanent
family home a stone’s throw from the beach just in time for Tony to
attend junior high in a small, K-Grade Eight rural school. The domineering boys
were over-aged and waiting to turn 16 so they could quit school and buy a car.
At Graham Creighton High
School in the primarily Black community of Cherry Brook, Tony became acquainted
with structural and personal racism, although he understood nothing of his
white privilege at the time.
When he graduated, Dalhousie
University was busily recruiting more deeply from the high school pool to
expand its tuition base. Dal offered him a place. It was the late 1960s and
Tony was drawn to the counterculture and left-wing politics.
In his third year at Dal, he
met Heather Frenette with whom he has shared decades of marriage. They’ve
travelled in the US, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean together.
After a stint of high school
teaching in Newfoundland, Tony and Heather returned to Dalhousie, where they
graduated at the same convocation, Heather with a B.Sc.
and Tony with an M.A. Later that year, Tony became a research student at Kings
College, University of Cambridge, while Heather worked in the town library,
helping to put her husband through (PHT).
During Tony’s student
orientation session at Kings, new members were brought into the College
Boardroom, where the silver collection was put on dazzling display on the grand
table. All these well-polished chalices, bowls, trays
and other riches, we were told, had been donated to the College over the
centuries by grateful alumni, which we would soon become.
Tony finished his formal
education with a Ph.D. in social and political science and accepted a faculty
position at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where he already knew
two faculty members. Tony and Heather moved to Canning in the Annapolis Valley
to work, renovate a century home, and raise a family. After thirty years in the
Valley, they returned to Halifax, where they currently live. Heather and Tony
have two children and are now enjoying being grandparents. They are especially
grateful their son generously created the striking cover art for the book.
E-mail: tony.thomson@acadiau.ca
FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/Tony-Thomson-Author-103704399040717
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/TonyThomson1
