Sam Wiebe

Sam Wiebe is the award-winning author of the Wakeland novels, one of the most authentic and acclaimed detective series in Canada, including Invisible Dead (“the definitive Vancouver crime novel”), Cut You Down (“successfully brings Raymond Chandler into the 21st century”), Hell and Gone ("the best crime writer in Canada"), and Sunset and Jericho ("Terminal City’s grittiest, most intelligent, most sensitively observed contemporary detective series").

Wiebe’s other books include Never Going Back, Last of the Independents, and the Vancouver Noir anthology, which he edited.

Wiebe’s work has won the Crime Writers of Canada award and the Kobo Emerging Writers prize, and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Hammett, Shamus, and City of Vancouver book prizes.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Wiebe's reply:

Green River, Running Red by Ann Rule

There’s a moment in Green River, Running Red when Ann Rules relates how she’d unconsciously begun referring to the forty-plus victims of Gary Ridgeway as numbers. Horrified, she wills herself to memorize the names and details of the women—to never forget their humanity. It’s a powerful book, covering a decades-long investigation that Rule herself was connected to.

The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald

I feel a strong affinity with Ross Macdonald, and not just because we both grew up in Vancouver. His novels are about human nature, justice, mercy, the weight of the past on the present, and the interactions of people with the geography of the west.

The Zebra-Striped Hearse isn’t the best Lew Archer novel—for my money that would be The Underground Man—but it’s a strong example of Macdonald’s strengths as a writer. A running theme of the book is how the young, the old, and the middle aged get along. The group of surfing kids who tool around in the zebra-striped hearse scandalize the people around them, but Archer treats them as equals and they end up helping his investigation.

Questions of age and class are important in Sunset and Jericho, too. Wakeland is caught between the city’s wealthy elite and a group of violent young radicals determined to hold the rich to account. What happens when you have more in common with the killers than your clients? And what do we owe the next generation? Macdonald was there first, and is one of the best.

Visit Sam Wiebe's website.

My Book, The Movie: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Invisible Dead.

The Page 69 Test: Cut You Down.

Q&A with Sam Wiebe.

The Page 69 Test: Hell and Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Hell and Gone.

My Book, The Movie: Sunset and Jericho.

--Marshal Zeringue