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samwiebe.com - the website of award-winning writer Sam Wiebe

Dave Wakeland is the millennial Jim Rockford, the Philip Marlowe of the Pacific Northwest.

 

A brilliant, flawed, reckless, but ultimately moral detective, Wakeland’s cases are both captivating crime thrillers as well as snapshots of a city undergoing tremendous social change.

 

A former beat cop and amateur boxer, Wakeland would be at home in a run-down office in the shabby part of town. Instead, he’s one half of Wakeland & Chen Investigations, the city’s top private security firm.  Partnered with Jeff Chen, whose business savvy has built a roster of high-paying corporate clients, Dave often finds himself the odd person out at his own firm.

Invisible Dead

(Book One)

 

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CITY OF VANCOUVER BOOK AWARD
WINNER, BEST PI NOVEL and BEST NEW PI, Sons of Spade

 

A gritty, private-eye series begins on the streets of Vancouver.

Dave Wakeland isn't the usual PI. A 29-year-old ex-cop, he makes a habit of bad ideas. Chelsea Loam falls squarely into that category. Chelsea disappeared eleven years ago, leaving a trail leading towards career criminals and powerful men. Taking her case quickly starts to look like a good way to get killed. 


  Whatever ghosts drive Wakeland, they drive him inexorably, addictively toward danger and the allure of an unsolvable mystery. In this fresh and fast-paced noir thriller, echoing the darkest troubles of our age, a witty and badly bruised new face takes his place in the ranks of the very finest characters in crime fiction

 

"Sharp, Terrific, Disturbingly Grim" 
The Vancouver Sun 

“Witty, smart, detailed, and highly entertaining. Wiebe has a gift for place and character.”
Steve Berry, New York Times best-selling author

 

 “A gripping, wrenching, brilliant piece of fiction, quite possibly the definitive Vancouver crime novel.”
Owen Laukkanen, bestselling author of The Professionals

 

"Accomplishes what Richard Price's novels and David Simon's television shows do."

Naben Ruthnum, Hazlitt

Cut You Down
(Book Two)

 

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HAMMETT PRIZE AND THE SHAMUS AWARD

YEAR'S BEST LISTS FROM CRIMEREADS AND DEAD END FOLLIES
 

 

 

Vancouver PI Dave Wakeland returns, hot on the trail of a missing college student who may or may not have stolen half a million dollars. 

What starts as a straightforward runaway case soon gives way to a tangled mess of dirty money, betrayal, and murder, pitting the resourceful but over-his-head detective against suburban gangsters, a corrupt cop, and a contract killer with a fondness for blades--one of which seems destined for Wakeland's throat...

Sam Wiebe's morally challenged young detective takes up a cross-border chase that twists and surprises like only Vancouver's next master of crime could write. Never one to back down from the big issues plaguing his city of shining towers and forgotten corners, Wiebe returns with a vicious caper that threatens to leave no one--not his rogue detective, nor Wakeland's family and friends (or even a few of his enemies)--standing.


"Convincingly brings Raymond Chandler into the 21st century."
Publishers Weekly, starred review

 

"What a pleasure it is to encounter a new voice, a new kind of edginess, a contemporary formulation of detective fiction that has the heft and distinction of the genre’s classics."

Washington Independent Review of Books

 

"A study in both riveting crime writing and stark social realism."

Tara Henley, The Toronto Star


"A highly intelligent and satisfying page-turner."  

 Janie Chang, author of national bestseller Dragon Springs Road
  

"Gripping, complex, and with an unusual play on the classic femme fatale trope, this is crime fiction at its best."

Sheena Kamal, bestselling author of The Lost Ones

Hell and Gone
(Book Three)

 

SILVER MEDAL, INDEPENDENT BOOK PUBLISHERS AWARD
YEARS BEST LISTS FROM FRIENDS OF MYSTERY, THE STRAND, and THE RAP SHEET

 

 

When masked men and women storm an ordinary-looking office building in Chinatown, leaving a trail of carnage, Wakeland finds himself caught up in a mystery that won’t let him go, as hard as he tries to elude it.
 

The police have a vested interest in finding the shooters, and so does the leader of the Exiles motorcycle gang. Both want Wakeland’s help. The deeper he investigates, the more connections he uncovers: to a reclusive millionaire with ties to organized crime, an international security company with a sinister reputation, and a high-ranking police officer who seems to have a personal connection to the case. When the shooters themselves start turning up dead, Wakeland realizes the only way to guarantee his own safety, and that of the people he loves, is by finding out who hired the shooters and why.

 

"Wakeland is to Vancouver what Scudder is to New York, and Hell and Gone cements Wiebe's place alongside Penny, Barclay, and Atwood."

Reed Farrel Coleman, NY Times Bestselling author of Sleepless City

 

“The best crime fiction writer in Canada.”

Nathan Ripley, bestselling author of Your Life is Mine and Find You in the Dark

 

"I'm crazy about Hell and Gone...A terrific writer."
​Margaret Cannon, CBC's The Next Chapter

"Hell and Gone is a terrific, pulse pounding read from cover to cover."
Midwest Book Review

 

Sunset and Jericho

(Book Four)

 

FEATURED ON CBC’S THE NEXT CHAPTER
A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2023
ONE OF THE TORONTO STAR'S BEST CRIME NOVELS OF THE YEAR

 

 

The mayor’s brother is missing. A transit cop lies beaten and blinded, her service weapon stolen. A new series of graffiti tags are appearing, linked to an underground group calling themselves The Death of Kings. Class warfare has broken out on the streets of Vancouver, and PI Dave Wakeland finds himself on the front lines—but unsure which side he’s on.

 

Reeling from a bad breakup, and increasingly alienated from the city he calls home, Wakeland nevertheless agrees to look for the missing gun. The investigation takes him from flophouses, to city hall, to a clinic in the West Vancouver hills to a mega-mansion in the exclusive British Properties neighbourhood—along the way, crossing every ethical line the PI has drawn for himself. Even then, Wakeland may not be able to pull it off…

 

“With pacing that doesn’t let up, and a shocker of an ending, readers won’t be able to put Sunset and Jericho down.”

  Robyn Harding, Bestselling author of The Perfect Family

 

“Sunset and Jericho is classic Wakeland: sardonic, cynical and in way over his head. It’s also classic Wiebe: a fast-paced page turner with a sucker punch for an ending.”
  Dennis Heaton, showrunner of Motive, Netflix’s The Order


“The best in the series, vaulting over an already high bar. It’s the sharpest and the darkest.”
  Brent Butt, bestselling author of Huge and showrunner/star of Corner Gas

 

“Terminal City’s grittiest, most intelligent, most sensitively observed contemporary detective series.”
  Charles Demers, CBC’s The Debaters, author of Noonday Dark

Sunset and Jericho demonstrates the potential for depth in the private eye novel...I can't wait for Dave Wakeland's next case.
  Scott Montgomery, The Hard Word

Wakeland is as tied to Vancouver as Rebus is to Edinburgh or Bosch to LA. 5/5
  Crime Fiction Lover

Done well, the detective novel lately has been more socially relevant and prying than most so-called serious literature and Sunset and Jericho is a prime example.”
  Andrew Hood, The Bookshelf

Vancouver’s terse poet of a city in decline outdoes his own high standards with a harrowing account of kidnappings, gruesome tussles and political rhetoric. Taut, flecked with cynicism and hope, and disturbingly atmospheric, it’s a mystery to savour set in a hard-boiled world just a few blocks down the street.”
  The Toronto Star

Like a socially conscious Mickey Spillane novel for the 2020s, if Spillane’s private eye Mike Hammer respected women and took racial and gender diversity for granted.”
  Nick Martin, Winnipeg Free Press