What do you think?
Rate this book
Reid Bennett #10
A Clean Kill
There’s no rest tonight for Reid Bennett, police chief of tiny Murphy's Harbor in Canada. Not if he keeps getting phone calls, that is. The first comes in from Amy Wilson. She’s been raped on her arrival home from play rehearsal. The second has Reid breaking up a fight at a bar called Murphy’s Arms. But, the third call about a dead body is when things get complicated.
The body belongs to one of the night’s bar brawlers, an American tourist now stabbed to death in the road. It seems like there’s an obvious murder suspect until another body shows up in the lake. Are these murders and the rape somehow intertwined?
Reid must wade carefully through the evidence and the witnesses, all the while juggling pressure from a hostile city council and unwelcome reporters. Add in the town play, bear baiters, and American evangelicals, and Reid has his hands more than full. Thankfully, he’s got his dog Sam by his side.
The action explodes and bodies keep piling up in A CLEAN KILL, the fast-paced crime thriller from one of Canada’s favorite crime authors, Ted Wood.
The body belongs to one of the night’s bar brawlers, an American tourist now stabbed to death in the road. It seems like there’s an obvious murder suspect until another body shows up in the lake. Are these murders and the rape somehow intertwined?
Reid must wade carefully through the evidence and the witnesses, all the while juggling pressure from a hostile city council and unwelcome reporters. Add in the town play, bear baiters, and American evangelicals, and Reid has his hands more than full. Thankfully, he’s got his dog Sam by his side.
The action explodes and bodies keep piling up in A CLEAN KILL, the fast-paced crime thriller from one of Canada’s favorite crime authors, Ted Wood.
- GenresMystery
384 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1995
2 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
Ted Wood
36 books23 followersBorn Edward John Wood in Shoreham, Sussex, England, he lived in London until the outbreak of the Second World War. Enforced relocation to rural Worcestershire, which left him with a lifelong love of the countryside, was followed by service in RAF Coastal Command. In 1954 he immigrated to Canada, where he was a policeman in Toronto for three years. In 1957 he joined MacLaren Advertising as a copywriter, eventually becoming a creative director. He now lives in Whitby, Ontario.
While employment in law enforcement and advertising provided food and shelter for his growing family, Wood found time to write and sell short stories to Canadian and American magazines and to write television plays; he also collaborated on the musical comedy Mister Scrooge, which was produced in Toronto and on cbc television. In 1974 he published a collection of Chekhovian short stories, Somebody Else's Summer.
His Dead in the Water (1984) won the Scribner's Crime Novel Award, and publication in the USA and Canada. The book featured a small-town policeman, Reid Bennett, and his dog Sam—the entire law enforcement needs of Murphy's Harbour, a fictional resort community in the Muskoka region of Ontario. Bennett's and Sam's popularity was enough to extend the series though Murder on Ice (1984) to its current tenth title, A Clean Kill (1995), and to have the books also published in England and in many translations. A second series featuring a peripatetic Toronto-based bodyguard, John Locke, has thus far extended to three titles: Hammerlocke (1986), Lockestep (1987) and Timelocke (1991).
Source: Ted Wood Biography - (b. 1931), Mister Scrooge, Somebody else's summer, Dead in the water
Librarian Note: The John Locke series is published under the pseudonym Jack Barnao.
While employment in law enforcement and advertising provided food and shelter for his growing family, Wood found time to write and sell short stories to Canadian and American magazines and to write television plays; he also collaborated on the musical comedy Mister Scrooge, which was produced in Toronto and on cbc television. In 1974 he published a collection of Chekhovian short stories, Somebody Else's Summer.
His Dead in the Water (1984) won the Scribner's Crime Novel Award, and publication in the USA and Canada. The book featured a small-town policeman, Reid Bennett, and his dog Sam—the entire law enforcement needs of Murphy's Harbour, a fictional resort community in the Muskoka region of Ontario. Bennett's and Sam's popularity was enough to extend the series though Murder on Ice (1984) to its current tenth title, A Clean Kill (1995), and to have the books also published in England and in many translations. A second series featuring a peripatetic Toronto-based bodyguard, John Locke, has thus far extended to three titles: Hammerlocke (1986), Lockestep (1987) and Timelocke (1991).
Source: Ted Wood Biography - (b. 1931), Mister Scrooge, Somebody else's summer, Dead in the water
Librarian Note: The John Locke series is published under the pseudonym Jack Barnao.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 9, 2024
I finished this two nights ago. This was the final story of the 10 book series. I enjoyed the series very much, obviously some more than others. This story was pretty consistent with the formula followed in the other books. There was no hint that this would be the last in the series and I wonder if the intention was to write more, but they didnt get done. I stumbled upon this series while looking for canadian authors, and I am surprised that the series is not better known.
Displaying 1 of 1 review