Season of Darkness

The creator of the acclaimed Detective Murdoch Mysteries turns her exceptional storytelling skills to a murder mystery set in rural Shropshire, England, in the darkest days of the Second World War. The world is at war, and Elsie Bates, a vivacious young Londoner, is now working in the fields of Shropshire as a member of the Land Army. The war has changed everyone's lives, not least those of the civilian aliens imprisoned in a nearby prisoner of war camp. A German invasion seems imminent and everyone is on edge and, at night, literally in the dark. Then Elsie's body is found by the side of the road, a German pistol by her side, and Detective Inspector Tom Tyler has much more to worry about than the Nazis and his son's odd behaviour since he came home from the disastrous battle at Dunkirk.

Born in England, MAUREEN JENNINGS immigrated to Canada at the age of seventeen. After finishing high schoool, she earned a BA in psychology and philosophy and an MA in English literature. For eight years, she taught English at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) before becoming a psychotherapist. In the mid-1990s she started to write, and the first novel in her Detective Murdoch Mystery series was published in 1997. Six more novels in the series were published between 1998 and 2007, all of them to enthusiastic reviews. In 2003, Shaftesbury Films adapted three novels in the series into movies of the week, one of which earned the Bravo channel its highest MOV ratings to date. Four years later Shaftesbury, in association with CityTV, Rogers, UKTV, and Granada International, began production on the Murdoch Mysteries television series, starring Yannick Bisson as Murdoch. The popular series, soon to go into its fourth season, is now shown around the world, including on CityTV in Canada, the Alibi channel in the UK, and on most PBS stations in the United States. Maureen Jennings now writes full time from her home in Toronto, where she lives with her husband and their two dogs.