My good friend author Craig Bowlsby just won the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Unpublished Crime Novel manuscript.

Requiem for a Lotus takes place in 1917 Shanghai, where police detective Harmon Fletcher must solve the murder of a Chinese sing-song girl he’d failed to protect. Adding his Canadian prairie hunting experience to modern forensic techniques, Fletcher scours Shanghai’s dangerous jig-saw underworld for answers. But while he brings one killer to justice, another escapes, and Fletcher must sacrifice more than he expected before he’s done.

Here’s the opening to Requiem for a Lotus:

“When a man named Hong Song Lin shot his neighbour five times for blowing roasted pig smoke onto his second floor balcony, it wasn’t a hard case to figure out. There was two angry men, a gun, and a hot Shanghai summer.”

The judges selected Craig’s novel for its excellent writing and storytelling, a tense and compelling plot and pace, and intriguing characters:

“… What enjoyable reading! The author quickly pulls the reader into 1917 Shanghai and pins them there with its smells, sights, customs and politics … A very engaging crime novel.”

“… Loved the historical setting of Shanghai and it kept me fascinated … Inspector Fletcher is a solid and clever character, a somewhat rougher Sherlock Holmes.”

Requiem for a Lotus is the first novel of a trilogy. I’m confident that this exciting crime novel and series will be snapped up by a publisher soon. And when it is, I’ll be buying a copy.

Here’s Craig’s podcast interview with CWC interviewer Erik D’Souza when the manuscript was a finalist before it won top prize:

Last year Craig’s short story “The Girl Who Was Only Three Quarters Dead,” published by Mystery Magazine in April 2022, won the Crime Writers of Canada Award for Best Short Story.