The Birds That Stay

February 18, 2019 - History will not stay buried in The Birds That Stay, the debut mystery from playwright Ann Lambert and the first in her Russell and Leduc series.

As winter approaches a small village in the Laurentians, north of Montreal, a reclusive older woman is found strangled outside her home. Roméo Leduc, the enigmatic Chief Inspector for Homicide, is one day away from his first vacation in years but reluctantly answers the call on the case.

Marie Russell did not know her elderly neighbour, and she does not expect to become embroiled in solving her murder. Like most people in her sleepy town, Marie values the quiet months after tourists and cottagers leave. But when a startling clue links the crime to a terrible incident that happened on Marie’s suburban Montreal street in the 1970s, Marie becomes an inadvertent detective.

As Marie and Roméo combine wits to find the killer, they are forced to face demons from their own pasts as they confront a case where no one and nothing is really as it seems. 

 "Layers of a mysterious past must be unravelled to solve a murder in the present in this intimate journey through time.” — John Farrow, author of The Storm Murders Trilogy

"Riveting and elegantly written, with secret histories and crimes past and present, this marvelous novel surprises at every turn."—Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, and The Mommy Track mystery series.