From Publishers Weekly
Canadian Bowen's latest, after Love and Murder , is a harrowing look at the difficulties faced by those trying to break away from the effects of an abusive childhood. University instructor Joanne Kilbourn is horrified when her grown daughter Mieka finds the body of Bernice, a teenaged office cleaner, hanging out of a dumpster. Although it looks as though Bernice is another victim in a series of prostitute killings, significant details--including a teddy bear tattoo on the girl's buttocks--persuade police that it is a copycat murder. Concurrently, Mieka prepares for her wedding and Jo's son Peter is pursued by obsessive Christy Sinclair. When Christy becomes an apparent suicide, Jo is surprised to find herself listed as Christy's next of kin; then she learns that Christy also had a teddy bear tattoo. Investigating both deaths, Jo and her TV news director friend Jill run up against an unsavory secret being kept on an island in the northern Canadian woods. This poignant story exposes the danger that can hide in good intentions as Jo's efforts uncover the surprising identity of a sex ring's mastermind and put her young adopted daughter Taylor in danger. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Once again, Bowen's Canadian earth mother/university teacher Joanne Kilbourn has to wrestle with the everyday hurt of family love: her daughter Mieka is planning a wedding to the daughter of the politically conservative Harris family; her son Peter's unsuitable girlfriend Christy Sinclair has just popped up again; and Joanne has adopted Sally Love's young daughter Taylor (Love and Murder, 1993). Then there's also the catastrophic hurt of violent death: Mieka's young cleaning woman, a former hustler, seems to be the latest in a series of murders by spurned pimps; Christy, branded by a similar teddy-bear tattoo, dies after a barbiturate cocktail, having listed Joanne (why?) as her next of kin. It's no surprise that the roots of these mysteries are deeply entwined in personal threats to the family life Joanne would so dearly love to protect--or that she deals with those threats with unsurpassed sensitivity. With her rare talent for plumbing emotional pain, Bowen makes you feel the shock of murder and other horrors as acutely as she does her most reasonable fears about her children's lovers. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
“With her rare talent for plumbing emotional pain, Bowen makes you feel the shock of murder.”
–Kirkus Reviews

“Bowen…pulls her complicated story together around a shocking and all-too-realistic secret.…Her best book to date.”
–Globe and Mail

Review
?With her rare talent for plumbing emotional pain, Bowen makes you feel the shock of murder.?
?Kirkus Reviews

?Bowen?pulls her complicated story together around a shocking and all-too-realistic secret.?Her best book to date.?
?Globe and Mail

Book Description
Murder is the last thing on Joanne Kilbourn’s mind on a perfect morning in May. Then the phone rings, and she learns that her daughter Mieka has found the corpse of a young woman in an alley near her store. So begins Joanne’s chilling collision with evil in Gail Bowen’s riveting third mystery, The Wandering Soul Murders.

Joanne is stunned and saddened by the news that the dead woman, at seventeen, was already a veteran of the streets. When, just twenty-four hours later, her son’s girlfriend is found dead, drowned in a lake in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley, Joanne’s sunny world is shattered. Her excitement about Mieka’s upcoming marriage, her involvement in the biography she is writing, even her pleasure at her return to Regina all fade as she finds herself drawn into a twilight world where money can buy anything and there are always people willing to pay.

From the Inside Flap
Murder is the last thing on Joanne Kilbourn’s mind on a perfect morning in May. Then the phone rings, and she learns that her daughter Mieka has found the corpse of a young woman in an alley near her store. So begins Joanne’s chilling collision with evil in Gail Bowen’s riveting third mystery, The Wandering Soul Murders.

Joanne is stunned and saddened by the news that the dead woman, at seventeen, was already a veteran of the streets. When, just twenty-four hours later, her son’s girlfriend is found dead, drowned in a lake in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley, Joanne’s sunny world is shattered. Her excitement about Mieka’s upcoming marriage, her involvement in the biography she is writing, even her pleasure at her return to Regina all fade as she finds herself drawn into a twilight world where money can buy anything and there are always people willing to pay.

From the Back Cover
“With her rare talent for plumbing emotional pain, Bowen makes you feel the shock of murder.”
–Kirkus Reviews

“Bowen…pulls her complicated story together around a shocking and all-too-realistic secret.…Her best book to date.”
–Globe and Mail

About the Author
With her Joanne Kilbourn mystery series, Gail Bowen has become “a name to reckon with in Canadian mystery letters” (Edmonton Journal). The first book in the series, Deadly Appearances, which was published in 1990, was nominated for the W.H. Smith-Books in Canada award for best first novel. It was followed by Murder at the Mendel (1991), The Wandering Soul Murders (1992), A Colder Kind of Death (which won the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel of 1995), and A Killing Spring (1996). Gail Bowen is also head of the English Department at the First Nations University of Canada.


From the Hardcover edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When her daughter Mieka finds the body of a young woman in a dumpster behind her catering shop, murder has struck too close to home for Joanne Kilbourn. The police quickly dub the victim another "Little Flower" homicide - the latest in a series of prostitutes brutally killed, maimed, and dumped in the trash. Busy with her newly adopted daughter, Taylor, and with Mieka's upcoming wedding, as well as with her job as a university teacher, Joanne has more than enough on her hands. Yet she can't get the unfortunate woman out of her mind. Then her son Peter's eccentric and troubled girlfriend drowns, an apparent suicide, and Joanne is convinced there's more here than meets the eye. She learns the two victims are linked by a teddy bear tattoo and by their hazy backgrounds, as her search for the truth takes her from the dark and hopeless rooms that house street kids to the glowing homes of her city's most prominent citizens. These two worlds could not be more different, and when Joanne begins to see connections between them, her investigation takes a deadly turn that threatens everything she values, including the lives of her children. Combining vivid and likable characters with a powerful mystery plot, The Wandering Soul Murders marks the welcome return of Joanne Kilbourn - and of Gail Bowen, one of our most exciting new suspense novelists.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly