A Small Ontario Town is Filled With Mystery and Danger in As We Forgive Others

Cobourg-based author Shane Peacock has been widely read for years now. His work has won the Junior Library Guild of America Selection seven times, the Arthur Ellis Award twice, and he has been shortlisted for both the Governor General’s Award and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. A master in young-adult mysteries, the author returns with a new novel this fall.

In As We Forgive Others (Cormorant Books), the reader ends up in small Ontario town with Hugh Mercer, a former NYPD Detective. After his life falls apart in New York, he flees to this rural locale to seek a peaceful break through the dead of winter. Hugh rents a farmhouse in the country, but barely has time to settle before a strange woman arrives on his doorstep with a chilling prediction.

Within a few days, a local woman goes missing as predicted by this odd visitor, and Mercer is drawn into the mystery. He joins local police officer Alice Morrow to find the woman before it's too late, tackling their own haunts and troubles along the way.

Check out this Long Story Novelist Interview with the author today, where he discusses this thrilling novel!

Open Book:

Do you remember how your first started this novel or the very first bit of writing you did for it? 

Shane Peacock:

I’ve written many YA novels and those books always dealt with serious issues, even though the audience was young. Recently, my YA novels seemed to be getting more and more grown up and I knew it was time to write for adults, something I feel like I was sort of destined to do anyway (and I’ve done with non-fiction books, plays and documentaries). With “As We Forgive Others,” I started out wanting to write a novel about forgiveness, which I felt was in short supply in the world, and needed. We all need forgiveness of some sort. I also was interested in writing a dark crime novel, a little bit like the great Scandinavian crime novels but set in Canada, which I felt was a perfect setting. I usually do a lot of preparation before I begin writing, but with this one, I wrote the first chapter quickly and it had an atmospheric feel to it right from the start. I rarely share my work with anyone at this early stage, but for some reason, I showed it to my son, an insightful reader about age 19 at the time, reading lots of cool, edgy, adult work, and he liked it instantly. He liked it a lot. He seemed almost surprised at how good it was. I thought, “well, that’s a good reaction!”

OB:

How did you choose the setting of your novel? What connection, if any, did you have to the setting when you began writing?

SP:

As We Forgive Others is set in Canada, in southern Ontario, but in the northern part of that region, well off the main highways, in a small town and its countryside, though the location is never identified. In fact, Canada is never mentioned nor is Ontario or the name of the small town (nor will they be throughout the series). They are all nameless. This reflects the way in which Canada is like that, and the way in which I want to present this country, which I’ve lived in all my life – it is a mysterious place, often a dark place, full of secrets, though a good place too. (The second novel in the series will be entitled “A Place of Secrets”). Canada is usually thought of, if it is thought of at all, as a very ordinary place full of happy, polite people. But it isn’t. I’m presenting, in my mind, the reality of Canada and the Canadian personality to the world in this novel. It’s a perfect setting for a dark crime novel. Absolutely perfect. And in this novel the setting is seen through the eyes and mind of an American, homicide Detective Hugh Mercer, who has come north to escape his difficult life in the U.S., with the mistaken impression that things will be quiet and uneventful living in the quaint world of his neighbour (spelled with a “u”!).

OB:

Did the ending of your novel change at all through your drafts? If so, how?

SP:

This novel often wrote itself in the first draft. I knew what I wanted to say and who the characters were and it just moved quickly. The ending remained the same throughout all the drafts. It sets up the second novel in the series, something I planned from the beginning.

OB:

Did you find yourself having a "favourite" amongst your characters? If so, who was it and why?

SP:

If I do have a favourite, it might be Sergeant Alice Morrow, who co-stars in the novel with Detective Hugh Mercer. She is a small-town Canadian police officer, who appears to have lots of secrets and a dark past (just like her country), who begins having an affair with Mercer from the outset of the story. She constantly surprises him and never seems to be exactly who he first thought she was. She seemed so ordinary on the surface, when he met her. As We Forgive Others is told from Mercer’s point of view, but Alice will guide the sequel. (The pattern of switching from his point of view to hers will continue with each subsequent book in the “Northern Gothic Mysteries” series.) I’ve never written a novel from a woman’s perspective (I’ve tried to stay in my lane!) and it was fascinating to be Alice Morrow for a while. I really enjoyed it. And I might have even learned something! 

OB:

If you had to describe your book in one sentence, what would you say?

SP:

As We Forgive Others is a dark crime novel set in a nameless, yet recognizable northern country; “gripping and original,” as Shari Lapena says on the cover! I think she added “pick this one up and you won’t want to put it down!” Hard to argue with Shari Lapena.

OB:

What was the strangest or most memorable moment or experience during the writing process for you? 

SP:

Two things. First was my 19-year-old son’s very strong and positive reaction to the first chapter in its raw form, just moments after I’d written it. Secondly, was the reaction of Sergeant Janice MacDonald, a police officer from my area, who read the first draft and liked it as well. She obviously read it as a female police officer, a woman and a first-time reader. It passed inspection on all accounts. I was fully ready for her to tell me that it didn’t make any sense, on all counts! She has become a key advisor for me for this series.

OB:

Who did you dedicate your novel to, and why? 

SP:

The novel is dedicated to my wife, Sophie Kneisel, who has had, for many years, to put up with being the partner of an agonizing writer! She is a journalist and editor by trade and a very good one, and has taught me all sorts of things about writing. She is also someone with a great deal of depth of personality and I think there are ways in which I plumbed my knowledge of that depth to create Alice Morrow.

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Shane Peacock is an author published in twenty languages in eighteen countries. He has won the Junior Library Guild of America Selection seven times, the Arthur Ellis Award twice, and been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. His young adult novels include the Boy Sherlock Holmes series, the Dylan Maples Adventures, The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim trilogy, and The Book of Us. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario with his wife, journalist Sophie Kneisel.