The Two Vancouvers

The Genesis of Sunset and Jericho

Two murders take place on the same night, at different beaches in Vancouver. A very rich man and a very poor man. It falls to Vancouver detective Dave Wakeland to find out who committed these crimes, why, and how the two deaths are connected.

That’s what the book is about. But in another sense, Sunset and Jericho is about class warfare. What happens when the rich become so insulated, so indifferent, and the city so unaffordable, that people start lashing out, striking back? In a situation like that, what’s the meaning of justice? And what happens when the detective has more in common with the perpetrators than the clients and victims? That’s the situation Wakeland finds himself in.

Two bodies, two beaches, and two Vancouvers—the ultra rich, and the increasingly pissed off rest of us.

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The chief inspiration was a billboard which went up across the street from my dank, ground floor, junior one bedroom apartment in East Van. The sign said YOU DON’T NEED A MILLION.

It was, I felt, a condescending, haughty, and disingenuous spin on the real estate crisis. You don’t need a million dollars to live in Vancouver, only a paltry eight or nine hundred grand. It was clueless and offensive and posted next to a major transit hub where working people would see it as they headed to the bus each morning. You don’t need a million.

I don’t want to exaggerate my own circumstances. But there was something hopeless about that crisis, knowing you can’t afford to live in a place, watching a great many of your friends and contemporaries leave. And it exacerbated Vancouver’s other attendant social problems. And still does.

So what happens when people strike back, try to hold the wealthy accountable? That was the genesis of Sunset and Jericho.

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In three months Sunset and Jericho comes out. Pre-ordering would be a big help to me (and the book is just plain good). A blurb from Brent Butt, star and writer of Corner Gas, and the author of the eagerly anticipated psychological thriller Huge:

“Wiebe has an incredible ability to pull you through the page and into Wakeland’s world. You find yourself walking beside the characters, sensing the tension, tightening up at each dangerous turn, and ultimately feeling every gut punch. I think this book is the best in the series, vaulting over an already high bar. It’s the sharpest and the darkest.

Pre-Order Sunset and Jericho at your local bookstore, or from Bookshop, Barnes and Noble or Amazon.

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In the meantime, Pulp Fiction Books on Main Street has a very cool new initiative: they’re offering signed copies of my books, shipped anywhere in the world at cost (or picked up locally), with two dollars from each sale going to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society.

It’s a great way to get the first three Wakeland novels, Last of the Independents, or the Vancouver Noir anthology.

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Feb 7^th was Charles Dickens’s birthday. On social media, every middling character actor with a role on Mannix or McMillan and Wife gets a “birthday shout out.” Dead authors get posts about how their work is more difficult than popular YA novels, their personal lives are ugly, and how young people aren’t discovering them (or must discover them if the culture is to be prevented from burning).

I find Dickens fascinating. He was the only celebrated writer of his era who had firsthand experience of poverty and child labor. He wrote at a frantic pace, started several newspapers which he filled and edited while writing doorstop-sized novels in regular installments. Dickens held abhorrent opinions about the colonial subjects of India and Jamaica, and treated his wife abysmally. He also helped close down debtors prisons and workhouses, and started a reform school to train young women (many former sex workers) to survive in the Australian colonies.

Most interesting, at least to me, Dickens, along with Poe and Wilkie Collins (and Conan Doyle and Christie and Sayers and Hammett and Chandler and many others) helped to create the modern detective story. I researched and wrote a piece on “Dickens and Crime Fiction,” which will go out in the next week or so.

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Speaking of Poe, the other upcoming post is a review of The Pale Blue Eye, the Christian Bale film about a murder at West Point investigated by a young Poe. I went in with low expectations and enjoyed it.

My review touches on the problem mystery films have when the supporting cast has one particularly recognizable or famous face. (If you’ve watched CSI or one of those shows, you know that if the list of suspects is three no-names and Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince, Uncle Phil probably did it.)

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Someone on Twitter asked how to keep from getting discouraged when a project doesn’t pan out. The only way I know is to just focus on the next project while something is on submission, and to throw yourself so completely into the new novel or story or article that everything else goes on the emotional backburner.

Rejection happens quite often and it’s never pleasant. When a project is out of your hands, start another one.

This Substack is one example. I have a novel on submission and several stories out, and a couple of screenplays, and more stuff in the works. But I can post stuff I care about with a minimum of fuss. Thanks for reading it.