KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site, so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!
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A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Evie Chambers Mysteries Book 1
BY SUSANNE MATTHEWS
BLURB
When a body identified as her own washes ashore near the Pointe au Père Lighthouse, it throws Evelyn Chambers’s life into chaos.
Professional diver Evie Chambers gave up working with the Underwater Retrieval Team when the last body she recovered hit too close to home. Now, she works as a private detective to fill her days and keep the nightmares at bay. The last thing she expects is to become a victim of one of her most frequently investigated crimes, identity theft. While that’s problematic in itself, having the thief die mysteriously turns the theft of her identity into a tricky situation.
The police inspector in charge of the case doesn’t trust outsiders and warns her to stay out of police business. Not satisfied with that attitude, Evie goes to Rimouski, Quebec to discover the truth for herself. She intends to find out why the stranger stole her identity and nothing, especially not a crusty old inspector, will stop her.
Alphonse Binette, the handsome Parks Canada employee who oversees the Empress of Ireland Museum piques her curiosity in more ways than one. In his spare time, Al runs a licensed dive company, one of the few allowed to go down to the wreck and knows a lot more about the body found on the beach than she expected.
Al offers to help her with her investigation, and while Evie is cautious, she accepts. There are strange things going on in Pointe au Père, starting with a break-in at the museum, rumors of people rising out of the water, strange lights, sounds, vanishing boats, roads that appear where they shouldn’t, and a suspicious fire where another body is discovered.
The police inspector is determined to solve the case without Evie’s assistance or interference, but when circumstantial evidence makes Al the prime suspect in both the murder and the arson, it’s up to Evie to discover the truth and clear Al’s name before someone else dies.
A Case of Mistaken Identity is available from all Amazon retailers in both e-book and paperback formats. It’s also available in Kindle Unlimited.
Wishing you all a Happy and Prosperous 2025!
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A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Evie Chambers Mysteries Book 1
BY SUSANNE MATTHEWS
Introducing…Susanne.
Good morning,
I want to thank Karen for this opportunity to spend a little time with you today and introduce you to my newest novel, A Case of Mistaken Identity, the first book in the Evie Chambers Mysteries series.
For the past twelve years, I’ve devoted my time to writing romance novels— 49 published, the 50th due out in January 2025, but more about that book at another time. My favorite subgenre continues to be mystery and suspense. Evie Chambers Mysteries are primarily cozy mysteries where the main character is a woman sleuth who’s suffered hardship in her life and is working hard to reinvent herself and find the pleasure and purpose she’s lacked the last few years. These books, set in Canada, will combine romance suspense, cozy mystery, historical information, humor, and perhaps even some mild paranormal elements, all wrapped up into neat bundles designed to entertain you. The books will all be standalone, but connected in the series by the main characters who will move from one adventure to the other. Written in the first person, it’s my hope that, as readers, you will bond with her as the story takes place through her eyes and yours and want to follow wherever the cases take her.
I’ve set Evie’s first case at the Pointe au Pere Heritage Site with its lighthouse, submarine, and most importantly, the RMS Empress of Ireland Museum, located in Rimouski, Quebec.
Like my newest heroine, I have a vivid imagination and love solving puzzles. A few years back, the post office made a mistake and accidentally mixed up my name with that of our next-door neighbor who’d died. We had the same first name, and even though our last names were different, they both started with the letter M. For the record, seeing an envelope with your name on it and the stamp, DECEASED, is terrifying. The post office had returned a bank statement to the bank and then the bank had frozen my accounts—no transactions in or out, which meant my salary had been sent back to my employer. It was all bad and took almost a month to straighten out. Proving that you are who you say you are isn’t always easy.
My personal horror show took place before the computer age when a lot of things were done by hand. In today’s world, where we are constantly bombarded with warnings about hackers, identity theft, and fraud, I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often. So, I decided that Evie should have her identity stolen, but to complicate matters, she discovers that the bank and the authorities have declared her dead. As an investigator, Evie’s first thought is to figure out what happened and why.
Until a few years ago, I had never heard of the RMS Empress of Ireland, or the fact that the ship’s demise is considered the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history. On May 29, 1914, the ship sank in the St Lawrence River after being struck by the SS Storstad, a heavy-laden Norwegian coal ship, that sat deep in the water. The ship sank in fourteen minutes, not enough time for most of the crew and passengers to escape. A total of 1,032 people died, while 465 survived, but only 188 bodies were ever recovered. According to divers who have been down to the wreck, the ship is filled with skeletal remains. Essentially, it’s a massive tomb, for an estimated 700 souls.
Three years ago, on a bus tour of the Gaspé region, I visited the RMS Empress of Ireland Museum at Pointe au Père, a suburb of Rimouski, Quebec. After viewing the exhibits, especially the film showing how the accident occurred, my mind was filled with seemingly unanswerable questions. Why had the ship even left Quebec City Harbor, especially when there seemed to be issues, or bad omens if you will, from the onset?
According to some sources, the ship’s rudder had malfunctioned previously, and some thought it might be defective—why sail like that? Why not have the rudder repaired first? Another question that bothered me concerned the fog that was at the center of the entire mess. I’ve driven through maritime fog where you can barely see five feet in front of you. Since the threat of fog was present, especially sudden, thick fogbanks that rolled in unannounced, why did the captain of the Empress not put in place all of the safety precautions required in such a case the second he saw the fog? There’s even talk of a curse aimed at the captain himself—if you believe in those things. It was intriguing to discover the tale about the ship’s cat, an animal that had never missed a sailing, who refused to get on the ship that day and apparently watched it leave from the safety of the pier. What did the animal know that the ship’s passengers and crew didn’t?
In addition to passengers, the Royal Mail Ship, as its name implies, carried mail, along with 2,600 tons of coal, two containers of currency, valued at more than one million dollars, and 252 ingots of silver as well as several hundred tons of general cargo. Immediately after the sinking, the ship’s owners sent twenty divers in atmospheric diving suits down to the wreck ostensibly to see if she could be refloated, search for bodies, and recover the mail. My question is this, what was in the mail that made it so important? Secret dispatches concerning the war that started within two months of the incident? Or was there more aboard the ill-fated ship, now partially buried in silt, than the manifest listed?
With all of this buzzing through my head, I finally settled on the main plot of Evie’s first case. While the information on the Empress of Ireland is as real and factual as I could make it, everything else about Evie’s case and the characters involved is pure fiction, but I hope you’ll enjoy seeing how I used my research to create the story.
About Author Susanne Matthews…
Susanne Matthews lives in Eastern Ontario, Canada with her husband. She has three grown children and five grandchildren. Of French-Canadian descent, although her ancestry includes the British Isles, Susanne is an avid reader of all types of books, but with a penchant for happily ever after romances regardless of what it takes to get there. A retired educator, she spends her time writing and creating adventures for her readers in a variety of genres that include contemporary, historical, paranormal, suspense, and romantic thrillers. She loves the ins and outs of complex stories and the journey it takes to get from the first word to the last period of a novel. As she writes, her characters take on a life of their own, and she shares their fears and agonies on the road to self-discovery and love. After all, everyone deserves a happy ending!
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Links to Susanne’s websites, blogs, books, #ad etc.:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/40b09pJ
Happy Reading!
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Thanks, Susanne, for sharing your book with us!
Don’t miss the chance to read this book!
Good morning, Susanne, and welcome back to Karen’s Killer Book Bench. I’m intrigued about the underlying story behind the research you did on the ships. I love these kinds of thrillers. It’s something I can sink my teeth into. Cannot wait to read this one. Thanks for sharing your book with us today!
What an intriguing topic for a book. Thanks for sharing.
This book looks like an intriguing read really would like to read this book in print format, Have a good New Year.
Good afternoon, very nice to meet you. Wow, your book sounds and looks like a great read, very intriguing! Yes , way too many hackers out there , I guess they have nothing better to do . May you and your family have a Very Happy and Blessed New Year. Thank you for sharing the blurb.
I’m looking forward to reading this.
Oh, wow! This book sounds amazing. I really want to read it. I’ll put it on my wish list at Amazon. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your story. Much appreciated.