Selected by CBC The Next Chapter as one of the 9 best mystery books to read in 2021

Winner of the Manitoba Books Awards' Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction 2016 for the first novel in Charles Lauchlan Series. Reluctant amateur detective, Reverend Charles Lauchlan, departs the prairie city of Winnipeg and travels abroad to Scotland with his fiancée Maggie on a bicycle tour of the highlands. The tour runs afoul when the couple discover a body on the trail, followed by two near-fatal accidents. With a shadowy figure now following their every move and far from help, Charles and Maggie, along with their policeman friend, Sergeant Andrew Setter, must figure out how these strange events fit together before something more dire befalls the group.

FIFTY WORDS FOR RAIN is the second in a three book series that began with Put on an Armour of Light (winner of the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction). Deftly wrought, meticulously researched, and scintillating with charm and period prose, Macdonald weaves a winding, cross-country tale that will require all of the detective's ingenuity and test the measure of his resolve.