
Speak for the Dead: A Dominion Archives Mystery
More than ten years after The Foulest Things, murder and mayhem return to Ottawa in the highly-anticipated next installment of Amy Tector’s acclaimed Dominion Archives Mystery series.
It’s a stormy summer day when Ottawa coroner Dr. Cate Spencer is called to the scene of an alleged suicide. Inside a narrow vault in the Dominion Archives’ nitrate film storage facility—kept separate from the rest of the collection due to its dangerous combustibility—officers pressure Cate to rule the death a suicide. When parts of the scene don’t add up and a deliberately set spark threatens her life, Cate suspects that this death might be a murder.
Cate’s tough façade masks a deep compassion for the victims she examines. Whether she’s looking for answers because of her dedication to justice or to distract herself from anguish over her brother’s recent death, her inquiries plunge her into a world of military secrets, contentious Indigenous protests, and a seventy-year-old mystery with deadly implications. Will Cate manage to pull herself away from her scotch and grief to expose an explosive historic secret and solve a murder the police doubt even exists?
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Book details
- Author
- Amy Tector
- Imprint
- Keylight Books, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Pages
- 320
- Formats
- Hardcover, Paperback
- Series
- The Dominion Archives Mysteries
- Subjects
- Fiction › Mystery & Detective › Women Sleuths
Fiction › Women
Fiction › World Literature › Canada - Topics
- murder investigation · coroner protagonist · Ottawa · archives & records · Canadian fiction · historical secrets · suspense
- ISBN-13
- 9781684428878 (Hardcover)9781684428861 (Paperback)
About the author
AMY TECTOR is an archivist with twenty years of experience and the author of fiction drawing on that work. Her career has included a posting at the International Criminal Tribunal for War Crimes in Yugoslavia.
When she’s not writing, Tector has worked across archives in Canada and Europe, uncovering lost letters, mysterious notes, and a whale’s ear. Much of her fiction draws on her archival practice and her years living abroad in Brussels and The Hague.
Amy lives in Ottawa, Canada, with her daughter, dog, and husband.





