David Lalonde used to be a real-life detective with the OPP, and now that he’s retired, he’s putting his detective skills to a different use. He’s just published his first novel, Death of a Millionaire, about a crime investigation.
It’s 1985 in Northern Ontario, and the body of a man is found murdered. Was he the town’s saviour or its agent of doom?
Detective Inspector Jack Butler intends to find out. Toronto elites, Russian mobsters and powerful foes from within his own organization are determined to stop him.
“I wanted to set the book in the time before DNA, before cellphones and before computers,” said Lalonde. “I wanted to take the emphasis off technology and put it back where it really still is, which is on interpersonal skills, and strong investigative skills.”
The book is set in a town called Kerr Lake, which is inspired by Kirkland Lake.
“It's about a man who was murdered in town, and the events surrounding that murder,” Lalonde said.
“There are elements based somewhat on the historical details on the attempt to move garbage to the town of Kirkland Lake by the City of Toronto. But after that point, it delves totally into the world of fiction, and it just explores who might have wanted this fellow dead.”
Lalonde was a detective for the OPP for 30 years, the last 22 years of his career in Northern Ontario, including Timmins, Kapuskasing and Sudbury.
He worked locally on cases including the high-profile 2013 murder of Sheri-Lynn McEwan. The Sudbury nurse’s murder remains unsolved a decade after her death.
Lalonde began working part-time as an instructor in Cambrian College’s police foundations program in 2007, and full-time following his retirement from the OPP in 2015. Saying he enjoys mentoring young people, Lalonde is now the program’s co-ordinator.
In terms of Lalonde’s first stab at fiction writing, he said he’s always been a voracious reader, and it occurred to him that he had his own stories to tell.
“I just hope that maybe I could pass on to others the joy I've got from reading,” he said.
Holding a master’s degree in heritage and social history, Lalonde has a fascination with detectives, reporters and criminals from the Victorian era. He believes that their insights provide us with an unfiltered "backstage pass" to how people really lived and interacted then.
“One thing about the police detectives, reporters and criminals, is they gave us a behind the scenes look at what life was really like, and you get to realize, that gee, great-grandma was a lot more like me than I realized, which I find very comforting,” Lalonde said.
It’s not surprising, then, that Lalonde decided to set his novel nearly 40 years in the past, in the same year that he started his career with the OPP.
“I'm sure people's kids nowadays see people from 1985 as caricatures and that they didn't have the same issues that we have, but of course they did,” he said.
You can purchase Death of a Millionaire through Amazon or in-person at Bay Used Books.
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. She also covers education and the arts scene.