Misery Bay War: The Lovely Girls

RCMP officer Garrett Barkhouse’s former nemesis and now good friend, lobsterman Roland Cribby, has become embroiled in one of the traditional conflicts along the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. The lobstermen have a centuries-old tradition of warring among themselves over territory in the never-ending effort to squeeze a living from the bounty of the sea.

As the conflict grows, newly promoted Inspector Barkhouse finds himself distracted by another case given to him by his boss. It is one of just a handful of murders that occur in Halifax in any given year. The victim, Gail Mosher, appears to be just another statistic, a young woman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and is raped and murdered during an ordinary robbery. Or is it?

Soon, things begin to look more ominous. Gail seems to be a member of a thinly veiled escort service run by a pair of eighteen-year-old high school prep students. Soon, Garrett meets a high powered businessman who runs a salvage operation exploring some of Nova Scotia’s thousands of offshore shipwrecks. The man is an enigma. Is he simply a treasure hunter? Or is something more sinister going on? In short order, Garrett finds himself investigating not only a murder, but also a sunken treasure of unbelievable value. Once again, several seemingly different cases come together in a mysterious wedge of connections, not least of which is a lobsterman’s war.