BY ELYSE AMEND

elyse.amend@transcontinental.ca

Adultery, murder, and death — all in the upscale neighbourhoods and sinister alleyways of Toronto — set the stage for Pointe Claire resident Sheila Kindellan-Sheehan’s latest novel, The Wrong Move.

The fourth installment in Kindellan-Sheehan’s Caitlin Donovan series brings the dynamic duo made up of Concordia University professor Caitlin Donovan and her best friend Carmen DiMaggio to Hogtown to help a friend. Meanwhile, police are on the hunt for a murderer when 15-year-old Rachel Moore never returns home after a night of babysitting for a couple in the Bloor West Village.

Kindellan-Sheehan is no stranger to the suspense novel: her three previous books in the Caitlin Donovan series have been critically acclaimed, with two of them (The Sands Motel and Cutting Corners) landing bestseller honours. After making her debut as an author in 2003 with her personal memoir Sheila’s Take — also a best-seller now going into its third edition —Kindellan-Sheehan decided to make the jump to fiction when an acquaintance told her over lunch writing novels was a lot tougher and more work than writing non-fiction short stories.

“I thought, well, I’d like to try the challenge. And it worked out,” Kindellan-Sheehan said.

The Wrong Move has already received its share of compliments: Louise Penny, author of Cruellest Month and Dead Cold, described Kindellan-Sheehan’s latest novel as “a terrific mystery, told with confidence and verve, humour and humanity.”

From the feedback she has gotten from her readers, Kindellan-Sheehan attributes the success of her novels to keeping things suspenseful, adding in just the right amount of humour, and keeping the action, locations, and characters realistic.

“I know my readers like to read about places they know,” she said. “I try to make the characters realistic too, so that people can relate to them.”

Regular readers of Kindellan-Sheehan’s novels might recognize the author’s reoccurring themes: loss, guilt, and especially betrayal.

“In this particular book, the main character discovers part of herself she didn’t know existed and isn’t particularly proud of it,” Kindellan-Sheehan said. “Betrayal reveals to each of us a stranger we thought we knew.”

Kindellan-Sheehan will be launching The Wrong Move this Saturday from 2 to 5:30 p.m. at the Chapters Pointe Claire, 6321 Trans Canada Highway, at the corner of St. John’s Boulevard.