The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders
Available online through Arsenal Pulp Press and Amazon
2016 Finalist: Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award (BC Book Prizes)
There are literally hundreds of murders that remain unsolved in Vancouver, some dating back decades; their victims are now essentially invisible, forgotten by everyone except family and friends. Sometimes their cases are looked at again with a fresh set of eyes and the benefit of new technologies; sometimes they are even solved. Most often, the crimes are consigned to the city’s dark history.
Part history book, part crime story, Cold Case Vancouver delves into 50 years of some of Vancouver’s most baffling unsolved murder cases. In 1953, in what became known as the “Babes in the Woods” story, two little boys were found murdered in Stanley Park and remain unidentified to this day. In 1975, a 22-year-old country singer just back from Nashville was murdered, just as she was on the verge of an amazing career. Ten years later, Jimmy and Lily Ming were kidnapped from their Strathcona home and found murdered six weeks later. And there’s the 1994 disappearance of Nick Masee, a retired banker with connections to the renegade Vancouver Stock Exchange who, along with his wife Lisa, were taken from their home, their bodies never found.
Meticulously researched, giving insight into police procedures and forensics, and including new interviews with those connected to the original cases, Cold Case Vancouver is a series of intriguing mysteries and a fascinating look at Vancouver’s criminal past. Arsenal Pulp Press, October 2015
Cold Case Canada is a newly launched public group on Facebook to discuss unsolved murders anywhere in Canada.
See other books by Eve Lazarus
BOOK REVIEWS
“Lazarus, who has written well in the past about Vancouver’s seamier back-stories, does it again in Cold Case Vancouver. She delivers all the human interest and detail we want from true crime writing, but manages to avoid the most common lurid temptations in the genre,” writes the Vancouver Sun. “This book is a quick and entertaining read, but it also conveys a humane and sophisticated understanding of the social forces that lie behind and inform most murders.”
“A haunting collection of stories about murders in Greater Vancouver that have never been solved,” says the Times Colonist. “Lazarus has written a book that shines a new light on cold cases. With luck, it will trigger a memory, or a sense of guilt, and at least one of these cases can be solved.”
“As a populist historian, Lazarus has developed a lively but authoritative tone in three previous B.C. heritage titles. For her fifth book, Lazarus is more like a respectful reporter, avoiding sensationalism, as she relates the facts, without lurid or rumoured conjectures, adding maps, archival photos and newspaper clippings,” writes BC Book World.
“Lazarus outlines the publicly known facts of the cases with investigative diligence and a flair for storytelling,” says Canada’s History. “However, this isn’t fiction–these are the stories of real people, mostly young women and children, whose lives met with a brutal end.”
“Crime buffs and readers interested in true crime literature or an understanding how police investigate serious crime will find the book a satisfying read,” writes BC Studies. “Rather than “cold cases,” the victims are presented as people with productive and promising lives that included family and friends who loved them and missed them long after they were gone.”