Death Dealer: How Cops and Cadaver Dogs Brought a Killer to Justice

The title of this middling true-crime narrative, the latest from former prosecutor Flora (Finding Amy), pretty much removes any suspense. Early in the book, when David Tanasichuk calls the police in Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada in 2003, to report his wife Maria missing, readers already know that she will not be found alive—and that her murderer will not get away with the crime. With some dramatized passages that show traces of Flora’s flare for mystery fiction, Flora works through the story from David’s call, to his transformation from spouse of a victim to suspect. The writing sometimes lapses into the banal—“Sometimes, in police work, an officer will learn something that suddenly places a past experience in a startling new light”—and suffers from too many observations that real life not the same as TV. Furthermore, when it comes to the court proceedings, Flora relays far too heavily on legal documents, filling 15-plus pages almost entirely with quotes and breaking the flow of the narrative. (Sept.)