Cherry Beach
Will be published approx. on 2. July 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
978-1-77196-690-0 (ISBN)
Description
"This is one of the best Canadian crime novels of this or any year . . . Toronto now takes its place with Los Angeles, New York, and Boston as a character in the action and it's great."-Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail
A brutal murder exposes secret real estate deals, a corrupt police force, and the dark heart of a city simmering with unrest.
When two girls are found murdered in a rundown Toronto highrise, Jamieson Abel and his partner are first on the scene. Abel is a law school dropout turned police detective chronically at odds with his colleagues and perpetually on the brink of being terminated, and Davis is the department's only female officer of colour. Both understand their being partnered as a form of banishment, but when the details of the murder go public at the start of an excruciatingly hot summer, they find themselves thrust into the centre of a front page investigation that will bring to a head the city's long history of shady real estate deals and racist disenfranchisement.
Intricately plotted and brilliantly layered, Cherry Beach is a gripping literary crime novel that examines class, race, and corruption in the most multicultural city in the world.
A brutal murder exposes secret real estate deals, a corrupt police force, and the dark heart of a city simmering with unrest.
When two girls are found murdered in a rundown Toronto highrise, Jamieson Abel and his partner are first on the scene. Abel is a law school dropout turned police detective chronically at odds with his colleagues and perpetually on the brink of being terminated, and Davis is the department's only female officer of colour. Both understand their being partnered as a form of banishment, but when the details of the murder go public at the start of an excruciatingly hot summer, they find themselves thrust into the centre of a front page investigation that will bring to a head the city's long history of shady real estate deals and racist disenfranchisement.
Intricately plotted and brilliantly layered, Cherry Beach is a gripping literary crime novel that examines class, race, and corruption in the most multicultural city in the world.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for Cherry Beach"This is one of the best Canadian crime novels of this or any year . . . Toronto now takes its place with Los Angeles, New York, and Boston as a character in the action and it's great."
-Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail
"Gillmor really knows his stuff-in a dazzling range of areas. A layered portrait of a changing city in the guise of a gripping crime novel, for fans of Tana French and Dennis Lehane."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Cherry Beach is a largely captivating novel, the sentences by turns clipped and spare or expansive and stunning. And befitting of an author who's spent so much time in journalism, Gillmor doesn't pull any punches. The world he gives is an ugly one, much like our own."
-Paul Carlucci, The Seaboard Review
"A well-crafted police procedural with vibrant characters and a strong sense of place."
-Steven Beattie, Toronto Star
"In Cherry Beach, Gillmor serves up a tense tale with numerous twists."
-Andrea Geary, Winnipeg Free Press
"[Gillmor's] work . . . led him into worlds of crime and corruption. Now, he's writing smart, snappy fiction on the very same subjects."
-Edward Lander, Toronto Life
Praise for Breaking and Entering
"In a quiet story that takes place over only a few summer months, the Canadian author deftly converges doubt, infidelity and the fragility of family in a narrative that is both thrilling and relatable."
-New York Times
"Surely the most interesting midlife crisis of the year."
-Marion Winik, Oprah Daily
"Knowledge is mostly sadness in this intelligent . . . book: No matter where Bea breaks in, she keeps finding herself."
-Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"The genius of this book is to capture the exact way a familiar world of aging parents and divorcing friends and nice charcuterie platters could go right around the bend . . . A smart, funny, and sneakily terrifying version of the way we live now. (Do not read without working air conditioning.)"
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Gillmor succeeds at pulling you into the hopes, dreams, expectations, desires, anxieties and pathologies of his characters . . . Like jazz, the moments of tension in the book give away to moments of relief, only to return to building tension once more . . . reading it will strike a chord."
-David Moscrop, Globe and Mail
"A devastating and droll portrait of middle age that will be instantly recognizable to the 'sandwich generation,' stuck between kids and parents, and just generally stuck. It's a period of life that makes you want to do crazy things, and the only escape is other people."
-Stephen Marche, author of The Next Civil War
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Emeryville
Canada
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 209 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
322 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77196-690-0 (9781771966900)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General's Award for nonfiction. He is the author of four novels, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata, a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People's History, and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General's Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, The Walrus, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.