Where the Bodies Lie

“Sins don’t destroy people here. Dreams do.”

In a small city somewhere in an oil-rich Canadian province just east of the Rockies, a political scandal has erupted: an aging cabinet minister has struck and killed a member of his local constituency executive with his half-ton truck, in broad daylight. But the premier suspects that there is more to this “accident” than meets the eye—and he wants to know the real reasons behind it before the media or his political rivals do.

Enter the premier’s old friend Harry Asher—lawyer, former hockey star, self-styled intellectual, and recent divorcé—who is hired to dig into the incident. And it isn’t long before Asher’s investigation threatens to expose a chain of corruption that implicates many of the province’s most powerful citizens—including the province’s legendary now-senile premier—as well as its most cherished founding myths.

In Where the Bodies Lie, Mark Lisac draws upon his decades of experience as a reporter at Alberta’s provincial legislature to craft an absorbing debut novel—part political thriller, part fable—that opens up timeless themes of friendship, love, the inescapability of grief, the weight of history, and the nature of truth.