High Crimes

“A fast-moving swinging story of intrigue, suspense, action, and mayhem . . . [the] characters are all colorful rogues” ( Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ). In rugged, remote Newfoundland, a merry band of smugglers is carrying on a grand tradition, handed down over centuries. But the greatest of them all, a man named Peter Kerrivan, is now in the sights of the authorities, from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to the American DEA. Centered around a multimillion-dollar cargo of pot on a creaky freighter and offering a high-seas romp spanning from Colombia to Miami to the North Atlantic, High Crimes is “a gripping novel . . . with a thrilling triple-twist conclusion” from an author who has won both the Arthur Ellis Award and the Dashiell Hammett Prize ( Mystery News ). Review “A fast-moving swinging story of intrigue, suspense, action, and mayhem ... [the] characters are all colorful rogues.” ― Pittsburgh Post-Gazette About the Author William Deverell ’s first novel, Needles , won the $50,000 Seal Award, and, since then, he has published one work of non-fiction, Fatal Cruise , and ten further novels, including Trial of Passion , winner of the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing and Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. Deverell created the popular CBC Television series Street Legal and recreated its characters in a novel by that title. He is a founding member and past-president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, a member of PEN Canada, the Screen Writers Guild, and has twice been chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. He winters in Costa Rica and spends his summers on Pender Island in B.C. A merry band of Newfoundland smugglers carrying on a grand tradition. A high-powered RCMP inspector obsessed with their capture. A day-dreaming police scientist caught in a dilemma between the call of duty and his infatuation with a voluptuous femme fatale. A multi-million-dollar cargo of pot on a creaky freighter. A merry high-seas romp from Newfoundland to Colombia to Miami and the North Atlantic. Undercover plots, double-dealing, triple betrayal, and murder. These are the elements that bulleted "High Crimes" to the top of the best-seller list. The events are drawn from one of the lawyer-author's celebrated trials This high-seas romp from Deverell's Newfoundland to Colombia to Miami features undercover plots, double-dealings, and triple betrayal. This quirky murder mystery features an assortment of colorful characters, including a band of Newfoundland smugglers, an inspector obsessed with their capture, a day-dreaming police scientist infatuated with a voluptuous femme fatale, and a multimillion-dollar cargo of marijuana on a leaky freighter. Proving once again that fact is stranger than fiction, this novel is based upon one of the author's celebrated legal trials.
Newfoundland drug smuggler, Pete Kerrivan is acquitted of charges of smuggling marijuana into Canada and thus becomes targeted by RCMP Inspector Harold Mitchell. Inspector Mitchell is determinged to put Kerrivan behind bars