Product Description

Murder is the last thing on Joanne Kilbourn’s mind on a perfect morning in May. Then the phone rings, and she learns that her daughter Mieka has found the corpse of a young woman in an alley near her store. So begins Joanne’s chilling collision with evil in Gail Bowen’s riveting third mystery, The Wandering Soul Murders.

Joanne is stunned and saddened by the news that the dead woman, at seventeen, was already a veteran of the streets. When, just twenty-four hours later, her son’s girlfriend is found dead, drowned in a lake in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley, Joanne’s sunny world is shattered. Her excitement about Mieka’s upcoming marriage, her involvement in the biography she is writing, even her pleasure at her return to Regina all fade as she finds herself drawn into a twilight world where money can buy anything and there are always people willing to pay.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1442991 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-04
• Released on: 2001-01-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 216 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Canadian Bowen's latest, after Love and Murder , is a harrowing look at the difficulties faced by those trying to break away from the effects of an abusive childhood. University instructor Joanne Kilbourn is horrified when her grown daughter Mieka finds the body of Bernice, a teenaged office cleaner, hanging out of a dumpster. Although it looks as though Bernice is another victim in a series of prostitute killings, significant details--including a teddy bear tattoo on the girl's buttocks--persuade police that it is a copycat murder. Concurrently, Mieka prepares for her wedding and Jo's son Peter is pursued by obsessive Christy Sinclair. When Christy becomes an apparent suicide, Jo is surprised to find herself listed as Christy's next of kin; then she learns that Christy also had a teddy bear tattoo. Investigating both deaths, Jo and her TV news director friend Jill run up against an unsavory secret being kept on an island in the northern Canadian woods. This poignant story exposes the danger that can hide in good intentions as Jo's efforts uncover the surprising identity of a sex ring's mastermind and put her young adopted daughter Taylor in danger.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Once again, Bowen's Canadian earth mother/university teacher Joanne Kilbourn has to wrestle with the everyday hurt of family love: her daughter Mieka is planning a wedding to the daughter of the politically conservative Harris family; her son Peter's unsuitable girlfriend Christy Sinclair has just popped up again; and Joanne has adopted Sally Love's young daughter Taylor (Love and Murder, 1993). Then there's also the catastrophic hurt of violent death: Mieka's young cleaning woman, a former hustler, seems to be the latest in a series of murders by spurned pimps; Christy, branded by a similar teddy-bear tattoo, dies after a barbiturate cocktail, having listed Joanne (why?) as her next of kin. It's no surprise that the roots of these mysteries are deeply entwined in personal threats to the family life Joanne would so dearly love to protect--or that she deals with those threats with unsurpassed sensitivity. With her rare talent for plumbing emotional pain, Bowen makes you feel the shock of murder and other horrors as acutely as she does her most reasonable fears about her children's lovers. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
?With her rare talent for plumbing emotional pain, Bowen makes you feel the shock of murder.?
?Kirkus Reviews

?Bowen?pulls her complicated story together around a shocking and all-too-realistic secret.?Her best book to date.?
?Globe and Mail -- Review

Customer Reviews

Excitement in Regina!
The Wandering Soul Murders by Gail Bowen M&S Paperback 1992

This is my first Gail Bowen mystery with Joanne Kilbourn. The finding of a dead young girl in a garbage can next to Joanne's daughter's store is followed shortly by the apparent suicide her son's girlfriend (Christy). The two victims had known each other and the police are wondering what they could have known that would lead to their deaths. Joanne is drawn in by her feelings of guilt that she had not been very nice to her potential daughter-in-law. The death of a third young girl with a tattoo identical to one that Christy had, forces Joanne to try and find what is happening. This leads her into some very treacherous waters and her personal safety is threatened. The kidnaping of her five-year-old-adopted daughter, sends her rushing to rescue her daughter and in the end to solve the murders of young women and bring some very despicable people to justice.

The principal characters are well drawn and the family life of the widowed Joanne is very realistic. Joanne and her children are thoroughly modern in their relationships and it will be interesting to see if these relationships continue through the other books in the series.

By and large a good read.

Wonderful...
Gail Bowen is wonderful at evoking emotion. Even knowing the general plotline, each murder still had me feeling shocked and empathetic towards various characters. The plot is tight and moves along at a good pace. As in all of the other novels in this series, the characters are likeable and very 'human'.