Greg Rhyno’s got a way with mystery. His novel, Who By Fire (Cormorant Books), is a gripping whodunnit that rings with sharp, witty observations that rival the hard-boiled pluck of Daschel Hammit. But without the sexism and with a delightful dose of Canadiana. In fact Who By Fire is set in Toronto. The novel tells the story of Dame—the daughter of a retired master sleuth—trying to pull her life together in the aftermath of a painful divorce. She is pulled into taking a PI job to try to make some extra cash. The job sounds easy: follow her landlord’s supposedly wayward wife around and confirm she’s been cheating. But what Dame uncovers is far more dangerous and dark than she imagined.
During Dame’s romps around the city, we are reminded of the abundance of culture and history in our country. When Greg could have set his novel anywhere on earth (or off earth, for that matter), we wanted to know why he chose Toronto?
Q: Tell us about your decision to select Toronto as the setting for your exciting mystery?
I wrote Who By Fire as a thesis project for the University of Guelph MFA program. The MFA program is housed at Humber College, and part way through, all the college professors went on strike. This forced the U of G instructors to scramble for new locations, and every week, we would meet in different places across Toronto — libraries, community centres, art studios, etc. As a result, I got to spend time in parts of Toronto that were relatively unfamiliar to me. A number of my fiction classes took place in the basement of the Parkdale Public Library, and the neighbourhood seemed like a pretty perfect setting for a detective story.
More about Who By Fire :
Haunted by a childhood of picking locks and tailing suspects with her private-eye dad, Dame Polara desperately wants to leave the mysteries behind and lead an average life with average ambitions: to preserve heritage buildings through her job at City Hall, to care for her father’s mounting health complications, and to one day raise a family of her own.
But when her landlord serves her an eviction notice, and Dame agrees to investigate his wife’s infidelity in exchange for keeping the apartment. A simple domestic case, or so Dame believes, until her investigation uncovers a serial arsonist targeting the very buildings she’s fighting to preserve.
When this new mystery reopens old wounds, Dame must use every trick her father taught her to discover the truth and protect those she loves — lest the dangers of the job catch up to her and burn her whole life to the ground.
More about Greg Rhyno:
Greg Rhyno is the author of Who By Fire, the first novel in the Dame Polara mystery series from Cormorant Books. His debut novel, To Me You Seem Giant, was nominated for a ReLit Award and an Alberta Book Publishing Award. His writing has appeared in a number of journals including Hobart, Riddle Fence, The Quarantine Review, and PRISM International. He lives with his family in Guelph, Ontario.