Could City of Ice turn Montreal into a conspiracy theory capital?
by JULIET WATERS Detective Émile Cinq-Mars has something in common with his creator, Montreal novelist Trevor Ferguson: both enjoyed respectable, if relatively obscure, careers in their chosen professions up until their early 50s, when both had dramatic career shifts. Cinq-Mars, protagonist of City of Ice, was reasonably happy pouring his intelligence and integrity into the challenging detail work of Montreal street crime. Until the day he started getting calls from an anonymous informant tipping him off to a series of stunning crimes, making him a somewhat reluctant hero in Allô Police! Ferguson, on the other hand, suffered a sudden career downslide before making a brilliant recovery. On the abyss of failure after his last novel sold only 200 copies, Ferguson invented his own anonymous voice and secret identity: John Farrow, unknown thriller writer. With the help of a good agent, Ferguson sold City of Ice under the Farrow pseudonym to American publishers and shifted gears from a forme
