When it was Cold: Stories by Howard Shrier

by Howard Shrier

From acclaimed crime writer Howard Shrier comes a new book of stories that take you on a thrill ride unlike any other. When It Was Cold shows why reviewers consistently praise Shrier’s complex characters, razor-sharp dialogue, expertly rendered settings and killer sense of humor. His range and talent have never been more apparent than in this collection. The stories

Done With Him, a short, stark tale about a man whose worst fears materialize with one late-night knock on his doorRed Dot, about a woman who intervenes to save a neighbor when no one else willMilk Teeth, a stark procedural set in Montreal in 1951, when the city was Canada's answer to Las VegasThe Fender Artist, set in snowy Buffalo where a small-time con man pulls a scam on the wrong man and pays a deadly priceMarked Man, about a tattoo artist whose client tries to kill him as soon as he has covered up an incriminating tattooCrown Royal, the touching story of a young man who stumbles on a secret in his father's home after a break-inGringo Negro, featuring everyone’s favorite hitman, Dante Ryan, on a trip to the Dominican Republic that has nothing to do with pleasureWhen it was Cold, the grim story of an abused woman, her young lover and a bitter Ukrainian investigator who is after more than answersThe Icebox, an epic adventure about two young men bringing 700 tons of ice from Alaska to Panama in 1873I for an Eye, a laugh-out-loud mystery that follows a Biblical private eye down the Boulevard of the Babylons as he tries to find out whether Lucifer had fallen--or was pushed.If you already know Shrier’s work, you’ll enjoy every story in this stunning collection. If you haven’t yet discovered his writing, When it was Cold is the place to start.

335 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 8, 2021

About the author

Award-winning author Howard Shrier was born and raised in Montreal, where he earned an Honours Degree in Journalism and Creative Writing at Concordia University. Since then he has worked in a wide variety of media, including print, magazine and radio journalism, theatre and television, sketch comedy and improv. He has also been a senior communications advisor to government agencies. He now lives in Toronto with his wife and their two sons and teaches writing at University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies.

Series:
* Jonah Geller

Awards:
Arthur Ellis Award
◊ Best First Novel (2009): Buffalo Jump
◊ Best Novel (2010): High Chicago

Nominations:

Arthur Ellis Award, Best Novel of 2013: Miss Montreal

Bony Blithe Award, Best Humourous Mystery of 2013: Miss Montreal

Reviews

[Jim Napier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good short story can often be more challenging to write than a full-length novel. The short story author hasn’t the luxury of creating a prodigious cast of nuanced characters, or richly atmospheric settings, or of weaving together byzantine plots populated with fiendish red herrings that confuse the reader’s crime-solving skills. It is closer to the skill of a Japanese brush-painter, who in a few bold strokes must create an imaginary, nuanced world, tiny by comparison, but complete in and of itself.

Best known for his multiple-award-winning crime novels (Buffalo Jump, High Chicago, Boston Cream, and Miss Montreal, all published by Random House), Canadian crime writer Howard Shrier has recently published a collection of short stories that will appeal to his many fans and earn him many new readers as well.

The eleven dark stories, several of them prize-winning tales in their own right, span the globe from Collingwood, Ontario to Toronto, from suburban Buffalo to the Dominican Republic, Ukraine to Sitka, Alaska and on to Panama, even moving back in time, in an impish-but-perfectly-executed hard-boiled account of what really happened in the Holy Land during the earliest days of Christianity.

The plots are equally diverse, turning on an ex-con who shows up on his brother’s doorstep looking for a place to stay, unaware that his brother’s wife is suffering from terminal cancer; a wife-abuser who gets his comeuppins from a new arrival in the neighbourhood; a missing child who turns up dead and a local eccentric with a dark secret to hide; a con artist who meets his match; a grown son’s cat-and-mouse game with his manipulative father; a tattoo artist with an unusual request and an offer that can’t be turned down; and a grow-op heist gone seriously wrong.

The whole makes for a diverse and entertaining collection of noir tales that is vintage Shrier, the pervasive mood taking its force from the dark settings and damaged characters that we have come to expect from the talented author. His many fans will have much to rejoice abut this collection, and I predict it will leave them – as it has me – calling for more.
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In addition to being a reviewer with over six hundred reviews to his credit, Jim Napier is the author of Legacy and Ridley’s War, in the Colin McDermott Mystery Series.

[Mrs. Read · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’d never heard of Howard Shrier before reading somewhere and liking a short story of his (of course I remember neither the story’s nor the anthology’s title). To find out whether that story was an outlier or evidence of a previously undiscovered source of enjoyable mystery books I checked out his collection When It Was Cold. When I got to “Gringo Negro,” with its casual killing of someone’s beloved dogs, I stopped reading that book and will not read any more of Shrier’s work.
It is not really possible for me to review the book fairly. Imagine trying out a new restaurant and learning midway through the meal that the entrée has been made from locally-sourced cockroaches. Most diners would find it virtually impossible to answer the question, "Yeah, but how did the food taste?" much less return to the restaurant to try some different dish.