Shadow of Silence
Detective Sergeant Christian Anderson has closed every case but one. Seven years on, the one that got away is back, and this time it could bury him.
Seven years ago, the son of Regina's mayor was found murdered. It's the only case Christian never solved, and the city let it fade into the cold-case file. Then a true-crime podcast reopens it, airing witnesses who were never questioned and evidence that never made the record. When Christian is ordered to leave it alone, he starts to understand why the case went cold in the first place. Some silences are kept on purpose. Breaking this one may be the most dangerous thing he's ever done.
The third DS Anderson thriller. The series returns Spring 2027.
THE DS ANDERSON CASES
READ IN ORDER, OR START ANYWHERE
CASE 01 · CEDAR LAKE, SK · CASE CLOSED
No Place is Safe
DS ANDERSON, BOOK 1
B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree · IAN Book of the Year Finalist
After ten years away, Detective Sergeant Christian Anderson is going home. He may not be ready for what's waiting.
What should have been an ordinary February morning changes the moment he answers the phone. It's Gemma, his oldest friend and the last thread tying him to Cedar Lake. Her sister Cassidy walked out of a rehab center two days ago, and no one has seen her since. Gemma is certain something has gone badly wrong, and she's asking Christian to come back and help.
To understand who Cassidy is now, he has to dig into who she was. The deeper he goes, the closer he gets to a secret that connects them all, and once it surfaces, the suspects line up fast, each one ready to point somewhere else.
Time is running short. To save her, he'll have to unravel a mystery that's haunted him for twenty-four years.
A fast-paced and well-plotted thriller. Brees deftly balances multiple mysteries, suspects, and motives in an enjoyable read.
BOOK LIFE PRIZE
If you are looking for a book that has mystery, deceit, secrets, danger, heartache, and revenge... then this book is for you. It is all those things and so much more.
RAINBOW BOOK REVIEWS
This is a well-written if somewhat unusual book. The story set in the present day is a 1930's style noir detective-story pulp fiction dressed up with a few Canadian LGTBQ characters.
BRAG MEDALLION READER
CASE 02 · CEDAR LAKE, SK · CASE CLOSED
Trail of Deception
DS ANDERSON, BOOK 2
B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree
The coroner ruled it suicide. In Cedar Lake, nothing is ever that simple.
Lindsay Ross knew everyone's secrets. The outspoken school newspaper editor had dirt on half the little Saskatchewan town and a long list of people who wanted her quiet. She was the girl DS Anderson and Gemma found hanging in the sawmill outside town on a May evening in 2009.
Her death made the front page for weeks, then settled into the record as one more grim suicide. For thirteen years, the town took it at face value. Then paramedics wheel an old acquaintance, Taylor Jackson, into Gemma's emergency room with something to confess: Lindsay Ross didn't take her own life.
Christian goes back to Cedar Lake to find the truth, and the unofficial investigation forces him face to face with suspects from his own past, plenty of whom he'd hoped never to see again. The deeper he digs into Lindsay's life, the more lies he turns up, and they unravel everything he thought he knew about the people he grew up with.
CASE 03 · REGINA, SK · REOPENING · SPRING 2027
Shadow of Silence
DS ANDERSON, BOOK 3 · COMING SPRING 2027
Detective Sergeant Christian Anderson has closed every case but one. Seven years on, the one that got away is back, and this time it could bury him.
Seven years ago, the son of Regina's mayor was found murdered. It's the only case Christian never solved, and the city let it fade into the cold-case file. Then a true-crime podcast reopens it, airing witnesses who were never questioned and evidence that never made the record.
When Christian is ordered to leave it alone, he starts to understand why the case went cold in the first place. The harder he pushes, the more it costs him, and the closer the danger creeps to the people he loves. Some silences are kept on purpose. Breaking this one may be the most dangerous thing he's ever done.
STANDALONE · ST. JOHN'S, NL
Among the Ashes
A STANDALONE MYSTERY
His husband vanished two years ago. Just as Caleb's life finds its feet again, it all starts to come apart.
In St. John's, Newfoundland, Caleb Winters is one of the city's rising criminal defense attorneys, with good friends, a new relationship, and a near-perfect record against his courtroom rival, Crown Prosecutor Andrew Murphy. Then, on the morning of his closing arguments, a phone call drags the past back up. Skeletal remains have turned up north of town, and the constabulary believes they belong to his missing husband, Sebastian.
Caleb loses the case. Days later, his new partner disappears too. He's certain his furious client is behind it, but the harder he pushes the constabulary, the higher he climbs on their list of suspects. The bodies keep coming, and everyone close to Caleb seems to have a reason to want his life in ruins.
With the chaos closing in, can the constables find who's responsible before Caleb joins the people he's already lost?
A slow build to pure chaos, with twists that might leave the reader looking over their shoulder.
BOOK LIFE PRIZE
Well thought out and well put together. I found myself questioning everyone.
RAINBOW BOOK REVIEWS
ABOUT
C.L. Brees
C.L. Brees grew up in rural Indiana, the kind of place where everyone knows your business and the quiet hides more than it lets on. That instinct for small-town secrets runs through everything he writes.
He studied forensics at the University of Baltimore, where he earned a B.S. in Forensic Studies, an M.S. in Cyber Forensics, and a certificate in crime scene investigation, then turned what he learned about evidence and the people who leave it behind into crime fiction. His DS Anderson series follows a detective pulled back to the Canadian hometown he spent years trying to leave, where old friendships and older secrets refuse to stay buried. It opened with No Place is Safe and continued with Trail of Deception, both B.R.A.G. Medallion Honorees, with No Place is Safe also named an IAN Book of the Year finalist. The series carries on in the forthcoming Shadow of Silence.
His earlier work, including the standalone thriller Among the Ashes, circles the same questions: ordinary towns, buried pasts, and what it costs when the truth comes loose. Across all of it, he writes queer characters at the center of the story rather than off to the side.
CONTACT
Get in touch
For events, review copies, or just to say a book kept you up too late, reach C.L. Brees via e-mail at administrator@clbreesauthor.com