Hazel Micallef

The first homicide that Canadian Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, acting chief of the Port Dundas police, has had to investigate in almost three years is that of cancer patient Delia Chandler, a woman who once had an affair with Hazel's father. When a few days later, and three hundred kilometers away, the mutilated body of an multiple sclerosis sufferer is found, painted in Chandler's blood, Micallef realizes that someone is killing the terminally ill, and not for mercy's sake.

Investigator Hazel Micallef is still recovering from back surgery when a report comes in that a body has been found in a nearby lake, snagged under several feet of water. But the whole thing is way too eerie. The first installment of a story has just been published in the local paper: a passage that describes in detail just such a discovery. Real life is far too close to fiction for coincidence.

Stinging deaths aren't uncommon in the summertime, but when Henry Wiest turns up stung to death at an Indian reservation, Detective Hazel Micallef senses not all is as it seems. And when it turns out the "bee" was a diabolical teenaged girl on a murder spree with a strange weapon, a dark and twisted crime begins to slowly emerge. The questions, contradictions, and bodies begin to mount, as two separate police forces struggle to work together to save the soul of Westmuir County.

Taking place in the quintessential Canadian town, The Night Bell moves between the past and the present as two mysteries converge. A discovery of the bones of murdered children is made on land that was once a county foster home. Now it's being developed as a brand-new subdivision whose first residents are already railing against broken promises and corruption. But when three of their number are murdered after the bones are found, their frustration turns to terror.