Description

MARCH 2025. PRE-ORDER NOW. FREE SHIPPING IN NORTH AMERICA.

Malory Fleet’s son was killed by bikers and now she’s worried about his missing girlfriend, Amanda. But that case was closed shut by the police a year ago and Frank Cain, the private investigator she’s hired, is reluctant to take it on. On the sometimes seedy streets of uptown Saint John, no one wants to talk, even fewer have anything to say, and the police have cast a blanket of fog over everything. As Frank searches fruitlessly for clues, he learns more about Malory than about Amanda, and begins to grow wary. Throughout, Detective Stuart Boucher is following Frank and making little effort to hide it, leading Cain to conclude that the officer may have more to do with the case than he’s letting on. For Frank Cain, as unmoored as a lost ship in the harbour, in unravelling this case he risks unravelling himself.

Saints Rest is a neo-noir novel set in a gritty and unforgiving Saint John, a town where few people are prepared for its secrets, least of all Frank Cain.

Luke Francis Beirne was born in Donegal, Ireland, and lives on the Wolastoqey land of Saint John, New Brunswick. His first novel, Foxhunt (Baraka Books, 2022), was a finalist for the 2022 Foreword INDIES award and selected as one of The Miramichi Reader’s Very Best novels of 2022. His second novel, Blacklion (Baraka Books, 2023), was selected by CBC as one of the novels to read in 2023 and shortlisted by the Writer’s Federation of New Brunswick for the 2023 Best Novel Award. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Counterpunch, NB Media Co-op, Hamilton Arts & Letters, and CrimeReads. Beirne’s work has been stylistically compared to Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Frederick Forsyth, and John le Carre. Saints Rest is his third novel.

Praise

“Beirne captures the hard-boiled spirit of Saint John—the dense fog, the salty air of the harbour, the cold-in-the-bones daily life of the working class. A fine example of East Coast Grit Lit.” Jerrod Edson, novelist

About Blacklion 

“Mr. Beirne’s writing is good, really good…I used to read a lot of Frederick Forsyth, and Blacklion very much recalls the type of story Mr. Forsyth would spin. Recommended, along with Foxhunt.” James Fisher, The Seaboard Review

“Highly atmospheric… very cinematic…” Colleen Kitts-Goguen, CBC

“Beirne achieves a certain Hemingway quality for his protagonist and associates… a fine effort in a genre where the bar has been set extremely high by le Carre, Greene, Deighton, and others.” Ian Thomas Shaw, The Ottawa Review of Books

About Foxhunt

“[Foxhunt is] a cold-war thriller rather like early le Carré. … eerily pertinent given recent news …” Simon Lavery, Tredynas Days

“[A] brilliant young writer.” David Adams Richards

“With its beautifully lyrical prose, Foxhunt is an alchemic mix of realpolitik and shadowy noir.” Mark Anthony Jarman

“Against a seamless historical and literary backdrop, Foxhunt balances compelling intrigue with vulnerable human emotions.” Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews (March-April 2022)