An excerpt from the novel by Sam Wiebe
Featuring Dave Wakeland
April 2025
CHAPTER ONE
The day before, I was sitting in a park near the Marché Jean-Talon, trying very hard not to smoke a cigarette. The swampy heat of late August in Montréal made this a little easier. Occupying a bench with a St-Viateur bagel and an Earl Grey tea, sweating through my flannel shirt. Listening to the noise of the market and the power surge sound of cicadas. My phone rang. That familiar 604 area code.
“Wakeland,” I said.
“I need help.”
In my former career, no three words could have prompted me to action more swiftly. Other than maybe, “you owe me.” Since retirement, though, I’d been practising radical indifference. Dave Wakeland version française was a creature of boozy idleness. He spent his days reading in parks and wandering an unfamiliar city, nights in bars with good music or sprawled on the fire escape outside his kitchen window. After eighteen months, I was only beginning to get a handle on him.
“You want, I can recommend a P.I.,” I said into the phone. “Have you tried Jeff Chen? He’s very good.”
“And very busy, Dave. And anyway, this is more your kinda thing.”
I knew the voice, and knew what she meant. Wakeland & Chen handled security and investigations. Jeff oversaw the larger and more profitable security division, leaving me to run the Department of Faint Hopes and Lost Causes [DF1]. My kinda thing.
“I’m retired,” I told the voice. “Find someone with fewer city miles on them.”
“City miles bullshit. Check your email.”
I did, seeing the ticket she’d already booked. Montréal to Vancouver, leaving in the morning. Fait accompli. Shuzhen Chen had left me no choice. I even knew the words she’d end our conversation with.
“You owe me, Dave.”
And I did.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sam Wiebe‘s crime fiction has been published internationally. His first novel, Last of the Independents (2014) introduced Vancouver P.I. Michael Drayton, and since then his projects have included audio adaptations of Hamlet and Frankenstein, an independent film script, and the Dave Wakeland series. He’s also the editor, appropriately enough, of Vancouver Noir, a 2018 Askashic release.
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Sam Wiebe on The Last Exile
The author speaks…
Copyright (c) 2025 by Sam Wiebe. Published by Harbour Publishing. Photo by Sam Wiebe.
