Book Title: WHEN LAST SEEN: A Hunter and Tate Mystery
Character Name: Ella Tate
- How would you describe your family or your childhood?
I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta with a younger brother, a stay-at-home mom and a father who worked in the oil fields. We were happy enough until an incident ripped our family apart when I was in my teens.
- What was your greatest talent?
My greatest talent is self-reliance. I left home with my brother at age seventeen after being disowned by our family. We moved across the country to Ottawa, Ontario, where I managed to earn a university degree while keeping us afloat.
- Significant other?
As Blind Date (first in the series) begins, I’ve just broken up with my live-in boyfriend, although we’d only moved in together six months before. Kind of a record for me.
- Biggest challenge in relationships?
I’m a loner at heart and staying in a relationship is always a challenge. Six months truly is my record.
- Where do you live?
I live in the cramped third floor of an old house in the Glebe neighbourhood. I’m not into owning possessions and furnished the place from the local Sally Ann thrift shop. Tony, my downstairs neighbour, takes me under his wing, keeps me fed, and works to get me out of my sweatbox garret so that I don’t begin talking to the walls like ‘mad Lady MacBeth’.
- Do you have any enemies?
I didn’t realize I had an enemy until last year — you can read about the hell they made my life in Blind Date.
- How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or
particularly repelled by, in this place?
I like my small apartment under the eaves (coincidently the same apartment my author lived in when she was single) in this older section of the city. The Rideau Canal borders the east end, lined by a bike path, beautiful flower beds and old growth trees. Between my apartment and the Canal is Bank Street with eclectic shops, cafés and pubs. I’ve grown attached to my downstairs neighbour Tony, his baking, martinis and taste in music, which pumps through the floorboards whenever he’s home.
- Do you have children, pets, both, or neither? I have no pets or children; not certain I should be in charge of either.
- What do you do for a living?
I’m a laid-off newspaper reporter turned true crime podcaster. Lately, the paper is contracting me to work on high-profile stories.
- Greatest disappointment?
My greatest disappointment has always been the loss of someone close to me and not being able to keep them safe.
- Greatest source of joy?
My greatest joy is being deep into an investigation and helping to solve a murder case. There are those who call me dogged and single-minded — I take this as a compliment.
- What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
Working on a case, researching, and writing news articles is my greatest source of fun. When there’s time, I like working out at a friend’s gym, and Tony puts on dinner parties that are beginning to grow on me.
- What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
I’m not always the best of friends when I get focused on a story. I’m reluctantly beginning to realize that I could do with being more sensitive to the needs of others.
- What keeps you awake at night?
Everything keeps me awake at night. I’m an insomniac who often sees in the dawn.
- What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
In When Last Seen, I’m engrossed in the disappearance of a three-year-old boy and a university exchange student. Detective Liam Hunter enlists me to worm my way into the life of a suspect, and to help bring the two, young people home. The investigation takes me all over the city, and I meet some might interesting folks along the way. The trick will be figuring out which one of them is behind the abductions before more than one person ends up dead.
Hunter and Tate Mystery #2
The hardest part is not knowing…
Ottawa is baking under a July heatwave when the Homicide and Major Crimes Unit is called to help track down missing three-year-old Charlie McGowan. This is the second missing person case in nine months — a university exchange student never made it back to her Carleton University residence from a downtown party in November.
At first, the two disappearances appear unrelated, but as true crime podcaster Ella Tate and Detective Liam Hunter dig deeper into both files, unsettling relationships begin to emerge. Evidence, however, remains frustratingly out of reach as the clock keeps ticking and concern for both missing victims takes on a heightened urgency.
And then Liam Hunter gets a call that a body’s been found on the Ottawa River Parkway …
Mystery [Ivy Bay Press, On Sale: April 1, 2023, e-Book, / ]
Brenda Chapman began her writing career in children’s fiction. Her YA novel Hiding in Hawk’s Creek was short-listed for the CLA Book of the Year for Children. Her first adult mystery, In Winter's Grip, was published in 2010. She is the author of the Stonechild and Rouleau mystery series. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
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