John Farrow Books in Order
Explore John Farrow books in order, with quick summaries, Trevor Ferguson background, series guides, and easy advice on where to start reading.
Last updated: July 7, 2026
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Publication Order
18 books
High Water Chants
by Trevor Ferguson
1977
Set on a remote island off the British Columbia coast, this early novel follows men haunted by a young woman's murder into a brutal chase. Wilderness, guilt, and survival drive the story forward.
Onyx John
by Trevor Ferguson
1985
A drifter with a past in smuggling and an alchemist-preacher father tries to make sense of a family and criminal world that refuse to stay separate. Ferguson turns the chaos into a crooked, comic search for meaning.
The Kinkajou
by Trevor Ferguson
1989
Kyle Elder inherits a huge Vermont inn from the father he never knew and almost immediately finds trouble. A skeleton in his trunk, a dead guest, and a nun he cannot forget send him back toward the past he tried to outrun.
The True Life Adventures of Sparrow Drinkwater
by Trevor Ferguson
1993
Told that his father was a raven, Sparrow Drinkwater grows up abandoned, adopted, and never quite at home anywhere. His search for his missing mother carries him through Montreal and far beyond in a strange, searching odyssey.
The Fire Line
by Trevor Ferguson
1995
Reed Kitchen, a railway man with a gift for language and big visions, moves through a world of camps, trains, and dangerous loyalties. It is a rough, restless novel about work, love, and the trouble people bring down on themselves.
The Timekeeper
by Trevor Ferguson
1995
Young Martin Bishop takes a job as timekeeper on a remote railway crew in Canada's north. Faced with cruelty, corruption, and wilderness survival, he has to decide what kind of man he will be.
City Of Ice
by John Farrow
2000
On Christmas Eve in Montreal, a murdered student is left hanging in a Santa suit as a message for Émile Cinq-Mars. His search moves through corruption, biker violence, spies, and a city fraying under political strain.
Ice Lake
by John Farrow
2001
A body under the ice on a frozen lake gives Émile Cinq-Mars a baffling winter case. The trail leads through Montreal's underworld, corporate intrigue, and a desperate race around experimental AIDS treatment.
River City
by John Farrow
2011
A murder during the 1955 Rocket Richard Riot and the theft of the legendary Cartier Dagger send this novel deep into Montreal's past. Years later, a young Émile Cinq-Mars investigates a case tangled in politics, myth, and city history.
The River Burns
by Trevor Ferguson
2014
Wakefield is split over whether to replace its old covered bridge, and the argument turns vicious. With a logger and his policeman brother on opposite sides, the town slides toward violence that could damage everyone.
The Storm Murders
by John Farrow
2015
After a blizzard, two bodies are found in an isolated farmhouse, and the case soon grows stranger still. Newly retired Émile Cinq-Mars is drawn into an investigation that links Quebec murders to killings that follow other disasters.
Seven Days Dead
by John Farrow
2016
An epic storm drives travelers toward Grand Manan just as old grudges and fresh deaths begin surfacing on the island. Émile Cinq-Mars and his wife arrive for a break, then find themselves trapped inside a mystery shaped by the sea and the past.
Perish the Day
by John Farrow
2017
At a New Hampshire campus hit by a fierce rainstorm, a student, a custodian, and a former spy are killed in different ways. Because one victim was close to his niece, retired Émile Cinq-Mars quietly joins the hunt for the link.
Ball Park
by John Farrow
2019
When Émile Cinq-Mars moves from Montreal's night patrol to day shift in 1975, his first case crosses paths with burglar Quinn Tanner. A dead getaway driver and a stolen item she barely understands pull both of them into something much larger.
Roar Back
by John Farrow
2020
Newly promoted in 1978 Montreal, Cinq-Mars responds to a bizarre cluster of apartment break-ins, stolen toasters, and a corpse pinned with a machete. A failed effort to keep one man in prison pushes the case toward gang war.
Lady Jail
by John Farrow
2021
In 1994, Émile Cinq-Mars is sent to an experimental women's prison near Montreal after an inmate is strangled. The prime suspect is a woman he once arrested, but the deeper he digs, the murkier the loyalties become.
A Patient Death
by John Farrow
2023
While in New Hampshire, retired Émile Cinq-Mars is asked to look at a rash of elderly deaths that seem too neat to be natural. The case pulls him toward the opioid trade, local secrets, and a sniper's bullet.
Bright Shining As the Sun
by John Farrow
2025
Recovering from a gunshot wound, Émile Cinq-Mars is pulled into a triple gangland homicide and another killing inside a hospital room. The accused is a man from his own past, forcing him to reopen old judgments and a cold case.
Where should I start?
If you want to begin with Émile Cinq-Mars from the start: City Of Ice → Ice Lake → River City
If you want the weather-driven trilogy: The Storm Murders → Seven Days Dead → Perish the Day
If you want shorter, later crime novels: Ball Park → Roar Back → Lady Jail
If you want the newest Cinq-Mars books: A Patient Death → Bright Shining As the Sun
If you want Trevor Ferguson outside the mysteries: The Timekeeper → The Fire Line → The River Burns
Author bio
John Farrow is the crime-writing name of Trevor Ferguson, a Canadian novelist born on November 11, 1947, in Seaforth, Ontario. He was taken to Montreal as a small child and grew up there, which matters because so much of his fiction, whether literary or criminal, feels shaped by the city's weather, divided loyalties, rough humor, and street-level energy.
Before he published books, Ferguson did the kind of work that leaves marks. In his mid-teens he headed into Canada's northwest and worked on railway gangs, and at night, in bunkhouses, he started writing.
That mix of hard labor and private ambition never really left the books.
In his twenties he traveled and worked across Europe and the United States, then came back to Montreal determined to make a writing life. For a stretch he drove a taxi at night and wrote by day, holding the whole thing together until High Water Chants appeared in 1977. That first novel was followed by Onyx John and The Kinkajou, books that helped establish the territory he works so well: outsized families, drifters and hustlers, comic strangeness, and people trying to keep their footing in messy moral weather.
He kept pushing in that direction with The True Life Adventures of Sparrow Drinkwater, a restless quest novel that sends its oddball hero roaming through Montreal and far beyond. Then came The Timekeeper and The Fire Line, both rooted in railway life, rough work, and hard country. The Timekeeper won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was later adapted for film. Much later, The River Burns returned to Quebec for a tense story about a small town, a bridge fight, two brothers on opposite sides, and a community edging toward violence.
The John Farrow name arrived when Ferguson turned to crime fiction. He has said the pen name joined his own first name with Farrow, the surname of a hood from The Fire Line. Under that name he introduced Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars in City Of Ice, then carried the character through Ice Lake, River City, The Storm Murders, Seven Days Dead, Perish the Day, Ball Park, Roar Back, Lady Jail, A Patient Death, and Bright Shining As the Sun. Readers tend to come for the murders, then stay for the larger world around them: Montreal politics, organized crime, bad weather, history, and the stubborn intelligence of a detective who does not think like everybody else.
Even when he writes a puzzle, he rarely thinks small.
Across both names, Ferguson circles some of the same human ground. He writes about workers, cops, operators, loners, damaged families, and people who are forced to choose under pressure. Railways show up often. So do border places, underworld economies, moral compromise, and characters who are not pure heroes but still try to do one decent thing before the lights go out.
He has also written plays, and his career has moved back and forth between literary fiction and crime without much concern for the fence between them. After many years in Hudson, Quebec, he later settled in Victoria, British Columbia. The setting has changed, but the books still carry the same stubborn interest in place, class, work, and conscience that was there at the start.
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