A Place of Secrets: A Northern Gothic Mystery by Shane Peacock

A follow-up to As We Forgive Others, A Place of Secrets does well as a stand-alone while honouring the characters and premise of the book that came before it. Where As We Forgive Others, as the title alludes, is about forgiveness and how it weaves itself into complicated scenarios, A Place of Secrets reveals a plenitude of layers, characters and their dark pasts.

The story is written in third person primarily from the perspective of Sergeant Alice Morrow, who is from the small northern community filled with familiar strangers. Not one to pry or judge, Morrow harbours her own guilt as she navigates a world of self-forgiveness with bad habits. Falling for a runaway cop from America, she respects his honesty while struggling to reveal her own sordid past.

This is a novel that, while mixed with a lot of characters and a wide variety of suspects, covers over sixty-years of twisted murders and tortured souls. Each twist being laced with romance, doubt, confusion all poured over with cement that buries it all.

Beginning with the discovery of the natural death of a centenarian, Alice discovers an envelope at the scene of her death with her name on it. A woman she barely knew seemed to target the lead investigator for no reason other than a death bed confession. With a sinister note inside leading to another body, Alice tries to come to grips with a haunting past of her own love affair and subsequent murder.

Harboured guilt does strange and different things to those who try to bury it, and seal it in a grave no one even knows to look for. To write about this darkness in such a fantastic way is a testament to the abilities of Peacock.

The confession was a little pointed, however, with the stereotypical reveal that all the mysteries led to. Taking another chapter or so to have a journal discovered would have added a bit of perplexity to honour the complex weaving of the entire investigation. To end it so on point took away some of the mystique.

A Place of Secrets is a well-rounded look at small town families, farmers and the complexity of emotions, romance, puzzles with many missing pieces, and years of deception, revenge and deaths. Like As We Forgive Others, Peacock has a talent for first lines, compelling chapter titles and a way of involving an entire community and its generations of members.

There was enough revealed throughout to maintain the intrigue and suspense without giving away any secrets until the very end. This novel is spine-tingling, haunting, and will have lovers of gothic mystery begging for more. The characters are raw, interesting, and relatable as the police service navigates new members and the complexity of long-standing ones. At the heart of A Place of Secrets is a sweet sentiment wrapped in silver linings and dipped in darkness, and all as cold as the winter days it takes place over.

Shane Peacock has been published in twenty languages in eighteen countries. The first book in the Northern Gothic Mystery series, As We Forgive Others, was published in 2024 to great acclaim and won the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Crime Novel Set in Canada. He has won the Junior Library Guild of America Selection seven times, the Arthur Ellis Award / CWC Award of Excellence three times, and has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award. His young adult novels include the Boy Sherlock Holmes series, the Dylan Maples Adventures, The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim trilogy, The Book of Us, and Show. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario, with his wife, journalist Sophie Kneisel.

Publisher: Cormorant Books (September 27, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 302 pages
ISBN: 9781770867987

Sarah Butland

Website

I am a struggling artist, a challenging and challenged mother who always thinks she is failing, an emerging freelance writer and reporter, an author with my name on several books crossing genres and always hoping to find more readers who enjoy them.

I am also a successful artist, a wonderful and thriving mother of one, a reacher towards both people and dreams despite all of the turned backs and obstacles in my way. I am a thriving freelance writer and reporter, an author loved by enough readers to make it worthwhile and a discombobulated conundrum who loves to hear new music, tell new tales and meet new authors. And I’m doing something I always dreamed of doing – reviewing books to support others as well as myself and my family.