R.E. Donald

author of the Hunter Rayne Highway Mysteries series

Tag Archives: criime novel


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Real Truck Driver Heroes

My mystery series features a truck driver hero. Hunter Rayne is a former police officer who left the police force and bought himself a big rig. In the series, he travels the highways of western North America in a navy blue Freightliner that his boss likes to call The Blue Knight. Whether he wants to or not, he still gets involved in investigating murders and, like the Mountie he used to be, he always gets his man.

But Hunter Rayne is a fictional hero, and the men featured in the following two stories from Truckers Report this week are the real thing. One of the men, Robert Tyler from Washington State, used his head and his truck to possibly save more than one man’s life when he encountered an unconscious man in a vehicle that could have careened into traffic at any second. Read the full story from Overdrive Magazine here.

In the second story this week, a driver trainee and the driver who was training him (Harry Welker) were in the right place at the right time. A state trooper in Kansas had pulled over a van at a rest stop. In the van was a man wanted for parole violations. He was somehow able to overpower the trooper, and had him in a chokehold. The two drivers, Harry Welker and the trainee, are both former marines and didn’t hesitate to run to the trooper’s aid, helping to subdue the offender so he could be taken into custody. Read the full story, titled Driver Trainer, Trainee Rescue State Trooper on the Truckers Report.

Truckload Carriers Association Highway Angel

Truckload Carriers Association Highway Angels Program

There are ‘bad apples’ in every profession and trucking is no exception; often it’s the bad examples whose stories get passed along. The truth is, the vast majority of truck drivers are hard-working individuals who care about their fellow motorists and deserve our respect and admiration. The two examples of truckers helping out cited above are just the most recent. The Overdrive website has many stories of such heroic actions in their feature Knights of the Road, and the Truckload Carriers Association honors these Highway Angels on an ongoing basis.

Country artist Lindsay Lawler explains the program and introduces her song about Highway Angels on YouTube.

 

Next time you pass a big rig on the highway, you might just be passing a Highway Angel.


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The Highway Mysteries

SlowCurvecovHJ72The Highway Mysteries have introduced a unique new character for mystery lovers, especially fans of the ‘whodunit’.  The hero, Hunter Rayne, is a retired homicide detective who left a successful career with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to become a long-haul truck driver.  Why a man would do that is a mystery in itself, but it’s no mystery that his sense of justice compels him to help solve crimes that affect people he cares about.

IceontheGrapevineKDPIn a genre that already has plenty of tough-talking North American homicide cops, brilliant Scotland Yard detectives and smart aleck private eyes, this polite and low-key Canadian truck driver has a niche all to himself.  He has adopted a solitary profession by choice, is struggling to pay the bills just like the rest of us, and isn’t very good at personal relationships, but when it comes to solving murders, he’s a smart and seasoned detective.

Sea_to_Sky_HJWrite what you know, they say.  By 1994 I’d spent around twenty years working in the transportation industry.  My husband had once done undercover work for the police and had used a truck driver as his cover.   Truck drivers can show up just about anywhere without raising suspicion, and they aren’t limited to one geographical area.  All of these factors combined to make a long-haul trucker the hero of choice for my mystery series.

As much as Hunter Rayne tries to keep his new life simple and uncomplicated, circumstances, with the help of his boss, Elspeth Watson, conspire to get him involved in murder investigations even in his civilian life.   As a boy, his heroes were cowboy crusaders like Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger, and he just can’t seem to let go of what motivated him to become a law officer in the first place, that need to see the guilty party captured and justice done.

The Highway Mysteries aren’t thrillers or full of heart pounding suspense, but they will keep you guessing.  The second novel in the series,  Ice on the Grapevine was a finalist for the 2012 Global Ebook Award in Mystery Fiction.  The novels are available in both print and digital editions.   They’re available online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites, or from Proud Horse Publishing, or you can ask your local bookstore to order them.  Just quote the ISBN numbers.

This is what readers have been saying:

“Those were the best mysteries I’ve read in a long time!! As soon as I finished the first one I bought the second and felt empty when I finished it! The characters were awesome and so there that I somehow think they are in my life and I should be bumping into them at IGA or Gibson’s Building Supplies!”  Judi H., Roberts Creek, B.C.

“… this book caught my attention from the very first pages and it only got better. …I recommend this book to anyone who has a love for a good mystery. I usually figure out who the guilty party is when I read a book but this time it was a surprise. I think that Hunter Rayne would make a great TV detective, driving around the country in his rig visiting different states and helping to solve crimes. He is that interesting of a character.”  See full PRG review of Ice on the Grapevine by Linda Tonis.

“The Hero to me is the heart of the story and having only just discovered a second book in this series I’m anxious to read more.” See reviews for Slow Curve on the Coquihalla on Amazon.

“The dialogue is well written and smooth and without giving away any spoilers there are well thought out and believable twists.  The pacing is good and the lead characters are likable, flaws and all, and though I haven’t read the first book in the series I now want to and look forward to reading more in the future.

I highly recommend Ice On The Grapevine as a good read and a solid example of good writing.  Plus, and this is probably most important, it is a fun ride.”  See Goodreads review.

“Great trucking detail, hardboiled characters, no-nonsense dialogue, and a surprise ending.”

“One of the fine traditional mysteries that keep who-done-it on everyone’s favorite reading lists.”

“Whodunit addicts will not be disappointed.”

See full reviews for Ice on the Grapevine on Amazon.

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The first mystery in the series is Slow Curve on the Coquihalla.  When a well respected truck driver, the owner of a family trucking business, is found dead in his truck down a steep embankment along the mountainous Coquihalla highway in British Columbia, his distraught daughter wants to know how and why his truck left the road on an easy uphill curve.  Her resemblance to his own daughter compels Hunter Rayne, a fellow trucker and former homicide detective, to help her find answers.

As he uncovers signs of illegal cross border activity originating in a Seattle warehouse, Hunter recruits an old friend, an outlaw biker, to infiltrate what appears to be  an international smuggling ring. But while Hunter follows up clues and waits for critical information from his old friend, the wily biker starts to play his own angles.

Finally, putting all the pieces together, there in the dark on the same uphill curve on the Coquihalla highway, Hunter risks it all to confront the murderer.

The ISBN for Slow Curve on the Coquihalla is 978-0-9881118-06.

The second mystery in the series, the one shortlisted for the 2012 Global Ebook Award in mysteries, is Ice on the Grapevine.  The story opens on a July morning with the discovery of a frozen corpse at a brake check just south of the Grapevine Pass in L.A. County. Hunter, who is in southern California making a delivery, is persuaded by his irascible dispatcher, Elspeth Watson, to help clear two fellow truck drivers who are arrested for the murder. His job is made more difficult by the fact that the suspects, a newlywed couple, won’t speak up in their own defence.

The circumstantial evidence is strong, and a rookie detective from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is eager to score a win.  The investigation crosses the Canada-U.S. border when the victim is identified as a second rate musician from Vancouver, and it turns out there were more than a few desperate people happy to see him dead, including the accused couple.  Hunter has to use all his investigative skills to uncover the truth.

The ISBN for Ice on the Grapevine is 978-0-9881118-13.

Sea_to_Sky_HJDuring what was supposed to be a few days of skiing at the Whistler Mountain resort with an attractive female acquaintance, former homicide detective Hunter Rayne finds himself the prime suspect in the RCMP’s hunt for “The Chairlift Killer”.  Hunter has no choice but to get involved in the investigation in order to clear his name.

Meanwhile, trucker Hunter was scheduled to haul a load of freight to Northern California, so he calls up his old friend, biker Dan Sorenson, to take his place behind the wheel.  What connects the badass biker from Yreka, California to the most prolific female serial killer in US history?  And what happens when dispatcher El Watson ignores Hunter’s warning and sends the biker on a search for clues to the motive behind the murder?

The ISBN for Sea to Sky (print edition) is 978-0-9881118-20.

 

The fourth novel in the series is titled Sundown on Top of the World and is scheduled for release early in 2015.  I hope you enjoy reading about my truck driver hero as much as I enjoy writing about him!

Like my page on Facebook or follow @RuthEDonald on Twitter for updates.


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Murder mystery set on the “Highway Thru Hell”

Massive, magnificent, and dangerous.  Many of us who regularly travel the Coquihalla highway can remember the year it opened, and the first time we drove those long, steep climbs and descents through the Coast Mountains.  Our first views from near the summit were breathtaking.  As long as you had a good vehicle and the weather was fair, it was a faster and easier trip from the town of Hope to BC’s Interior than the narrow and winding Fraser Canyon route of Highway 1.  It was a magnificent addition to BC’s highway system just in time for Vancouver’s Expo ’86.  (You might enjoy this video from the Vancouver Archives about the construction of the Coquihalla.)

It’s no wonder that when I began to plan my first novel in 1994, I chose to have the murder take place along what Discovery channel is now calling the “Highway Thru Hell” in their new reality series.  In my frequent trips up the highway that summer with my late husband, I picked out a spot where an 18-wheeler could go off the road and not be seen for days at a time.  It also had to be a spot where an accident was not likely to happen.  When I found a perfect spot, not very far south of Merritt, SLOW CURVE ON THE COQUIHALLA was born.

In the intervening years, the layout along that stretch of highway has changed, but the highway itself remains dangerous and spectacular.  I drove it again just last month, and like every time, I marvel at the magnificent snowshed and at the incredible rocky slopes of Zopkios peak.

Zopkios Ridge from the Coquihalla highway

If you like to read, especially if you like to read mystery novels, check out the first novel in the Hunter Rayne highway mystery series.  Hunter Rayne is a former homicide detective who has chosen to make long haul trucking his second career.  He feels that the solitude of life on the road will help him to heal from two events that devastated his personal life before he resigned from the RCMP.  His crusty dispatcher, Elspeth Watson, tries to keep Hunter and his navy blue Freightliner busy, and sometimes persuades him to get involved in murder investigations.

For the month of October 2013, there is a promotion on the digital edition of Slow Curve on the Coquihalla to introduce the Highway Mysteries to new readers, so check your favorite ebook retailer to download a copy anywhere from $0.99 to free.  Links to where you can purchase both digital and print editions of the Hunter Rayne highway mysteries are at Proud Horse Publishing, or ask your local bookstore or library to order it by giving them the ISBN 978-0-9881118-06.


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Hooked on Crime

Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved books. It’s hard to pinpoint just when murder NancyDrewbecame the main ingredient of my favorite reads. No doubt I cut my literary teeth on Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I can’t remember how discriminating I was in my childhood, but I must have liked books with horses and concussions, because that’s what I remember about my first attempt at writing a novel when I was twelve. The heroine – loosely based on my young self, I suppose, although I had never had a horse or a concussion – was continually being thrown from her horse and losing consciousness in her quest to chase (or was it escape from?) a bad guy.

HemingwayOnce I entered the senior years of high school, I became a book snob. It was classics or nothing, and my preference was for European classics: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Jean Paul Sartre and Thomas Mann are among those that come to mind. (I can recall throwing a Harold Robbins paperback across the room in disgust.) I also let myself read American writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Bellow, plus the occasional Michener historical saga. Except…

TravisMcGeeExcept when I was on summer vacation at my Uncle’s lakeside cabin, when I would raid his bookshelves for the works of John D. MacDonald, Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Dick Francis and Ngaio Marsh, among others. Then it was on to university, my first marriage and some dark days – years actually – in my life, from which I emerged still scorning contemporary crime writers in favor of Penguin classics. My second husband, a charming and brilliant rogue, but a rogue nonetheless, got me back into reading modern novels and I quickly found myself hooked on crime.

ColumboMy preference soon became mystery series, harking back to my earlier enjoyment of the Travis McGee and Nero Wolfe mystery series. That was reinforced by TV series like Perry Mason, Columbo and Murder She Wrote, followed by the original Law and Order. I shared books with my father, and sometimes others in the family, and our collective tastes ran from The Cat Who series by Lillian Jackson Braun to the Richard Jury series by Martha Grimes and the Thomas Lynley series by Elizabeth George. More recently – which may not be terribly recent by most standards – Michael Connelly and John Lescroart have become my favorite authors, and I now prefer to watch true crime like Dateline and 48 Hours on television.

So what’s my point?

justiceWhy would a law-abiding pacifist who even apologizes to flies and mosquitoes when she is forced to kill them (in self defense, of course) be so fascinated by crime? I know I’m only one of millions with the same fascination. Why, when we hate to witness actual violence, or even read about it, do we love books and shows about murder? I’m no psychologist, but I’ve often pondered the question, and it seems to me that it gives us comfort to see the perpetrators of crime found out and put away so they won’t be able to harm innocent people. We want to be able to figure out who did the evil deed and see them brought to justice, and that lets us feel a little more in control of the scary world around us.

Whatever the reason, even though I stray back to classics and will even venture to read a contemporary ‘literary’ novel now and then, I am and will no doubt remain, firmly hooked on crime.

* * * * * *

Joggers_covSWIf anyone is interested in sampling my fiction writing on their e-reader, I’m offering a free short story on Kobo, Smashwords and most major ebook retailers (except Amazon, where I can’t make it less than 99 cents). It’s called Joggers and features Elspeth Watson, one of the main characters in my Highway Mystery series. The three novels in the series are available in both digital and print editions. More information about the series at Proud Horse Publishing.

Enjoy!


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What about the Global Ebook Awards?

As I get ready for my weekend in Santa Barbara and my attendance at the 2012 Global Ebook Awards ceremony (any old excuse for a trip to Southern California and a fun weekend on the coast, right?), I can’t help but think about what has brought me to this point and what getting here means, not just to me, but to readers.  Where is “here”? you ask.

Ice on the Grapevine, the second novel in the Hunter Rayne highway mystery series, was  selected by judges as a finalist for the 2012 Global Ebook Award in Mystery Fiction.  It is one of five mystery novels shortlisted for the award from the original fifteen nominees that were accepted, out of I don’t know how many submissions.  The winners are being announced at the awards ceremony at the University Club in Santa Barbara, California on August 18th.  I’m delighted that my novel is a finalist, but what do readers think?

“Is it like an Edgar Award?”   Well known and respected, the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Awards have been around since 1946, the days of Anthony Boucher and radio dramas.   They are open to publishers on the MWA “approved” list only, which lets out most small independent publishers and all self-published authors like myself.  There’s no mention of a category for ebooks.

“Is it like an Agatha Award?”  The Agatha Award nominees are first nominated and then selected by registered attendees at the Malice Domestic Convention, and are for mysteries in the Agatha Christie tradition.  There are probably hundreds of mysteries nominated before the five approved nominees in each category are announced in February prior to the May convention.  The main requirement is that there be no explicit sex or gratuitous violence.  I’m not sure if ebooks qualify, and I don’t expect either of my books to make the list, not because they’re not good enough, but because they’re not well publicized or widely distributed.

There are many other awards for crime fiction, some regional (like the Arthur Ellis Awards in Canada) and others, like the Agathas, restricted to a certain category of crime fiction.  There’s a great site that lists most awards, Mystery Book Awards on the Omnimystery site (great place to visit if you’re a mystery fan!).

Unlike most of the awards listed, the Global Ebook Awards were just introduced in 2011, and are for books in digital format.  They cover both fiction and non-fiction books in a wide range of categories, and consider nominations from all publishers, including self-publishers.

Most of the readers I’ve mentioned the Global Ebook Awards to are very excited for me, and don’t ask questions about how long the Awards have been in existence, or how did my novel qualify, or how the awards are regarded by the traditional publishing industry.  “An award’s an award,” a local woman said to me today as I started to explain that it wasn’t as big a deal as she might think.  “I think that’s awesome!”

And she’s right.  I am proud to be a finalist, and I’m going to be thrilled to shake hands with ebook guru Dan Poynter, and Midwest Book Review’s  Editor-in-Chief, Jim Cox, and to meet the other authors who have entered this brave new world of ebook publishing, self-published or not.  Whether or not books have been approved by literary agents and editors at traditional publishing companies, readers know what they like, and so far they’ve been liking my mysteries, at least well enough to get me on a plane to Santa Barbara.

Wish me luck!

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The first two novels in the Hunter Rayne highway mystery series were released as ebooks by independent Canadian publisher Proud Horse Publishing  (established primarily to publish the Hunter Rayne mystery series) in the fall of 2011, and are now available in print editions direct from the publisher.  In the near future, print editions will be made available for wider distribution.  The series has been receiving very good reviews from readers on various ebook review sites over the past several months.

The series features a former homicide detective who reluctantly resigned from a successful career with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and took to the highways as a long  haul truck driver in the hopes that the solitude of the road would help him heal from the pain of personal tragedy.  A strong supporting cast includes his irascible female dispatcher, Elspeth Watson, who is as tough a boss as they come but is always ready to volunteer Hunter’s help when a fellow trucker is in trouble.  The author’s many years of experience in the transportation industry help to keep the situations and characters engaging and realistic.

The novels are traditional ‘whodunits’ with complex plots, multiple suspects and – for most readers – a surprise ending.  They feature realistic subplots involving the recurring characters and have more than one fan impatiently waiting for the next novel in the series.

I am working on the third Hunter Rayne highway mystery, set primarily in the resort community of Whistler, BC, known around the world as the home of the 2010 Winter Olympics.