Book 'em Dano

Fall activities are revving up. I attended the first Capital Crime Writers meeting of the season where we learned about homicide investigations from Sgt. Tony Gagnon from Ottawa Major Crimes Unit. A few things I didn't know:

The police can't bring you down to the station for questioning unless they arrest you for investigative purposes (usually at the point where you become a suspect). They need to convince you to go to the station otherwise, and people sometimes refuse to go. Boy, I wouldn't have ever thought to say no if I was asked by the police to 'go downtown'. I'd be saying, "How fast do you need me there?"

The RCMP do not investigate homicides in Ontario although they do in other provinces. If somebody was murdered at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa, they'd have the Major Crimes Unit in to investigate. Of course, Major Crimes don't ride around on horses - hard to be an expert in everything.

Sgt. Gagnon also told us that a spin guy is someone working surveillance while the slab is what they call Highway 417. Little bits of trivia that can make a mystery authentic.

I guest blogged Monday, Sept. 6th on Mystery Maven Canada, which is the brainchild of Linda Wiken, previous owner of Prime Crime bookstore. In addition to blogging, Linda will also be posting book reviews and she'll continue with guests, including authors, librarians and others in the book industry. It's a site worth checking out: http://mysterymavencdn.blogspot.com/

I"ve also figured out how to post photos on this blog, so there'll be more visual interest from here on in. Sad to say though that Ted has pretty much wrapped up the deck project. We'll have to wait to see what he tackles next.