Award–winning novelist William Deverell is back with a new Arthur Beauchamp legal thriller.

Lawyer Arthur Beauchamp is facing the most explosive trial of his career: the defence of seven boisterous environmentalists accused of sabotaging an Ontario plant that pumps out a pesticide that has led to the mass death of honeybees. The story zigzags between Toronto, where the trial takes place, and Arthur’s West Coast island home, where he finds himself arrested for fighting his own environmental cause: the threatened destruction of a popular park. The Toronto trial concludes with a tense, hang-by-the-fingernails jury verdict. Realistic and riveting, Stung is a propulsive legal thriller by a beloved author at the height of his powers.

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After careers as a journalist, criminal lawyer, and political activist, William Deverell turned to fiction and on his first effort won the $50,000 Seal First Novel Award. Since then, he has earned multiple prizes for his 20 published novels, including the Dashiell Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing in North America, two Crime Writers of Canada Awards (formerly the Arthur Ellis Award)for best Canadian novel, and two runners-up for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. He holds two honorary Doctor of Letters degrees. He lives in Pender Island, B.C.

“Deverell’s Stung is relevant, rich with countless memorable characters, loaded with courtroom suspense, and above all, tremendously readable. Up there with some of my favourite legal thrillers, a list that includes Turow and Connelly.” — Linwood Barclay, New York Times bestselling author of Elevator Pitch and A Noise Downstairs

“Stung — a blistering ride on a flaming meteor.” — Joy Kogawa, author of acclaimed, award-winning novel Obasan

“Canada’s Raymond Chandler is at the top of his game in this rollicking, riveting tale of youthful valour versus corporate villainy. Both laugh-aloud funny and profound, Stung is a feast of wit, satire and suspense to keep you up all night.” — Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress

“Some writers get better with age. Stung, William Deverell’s 9th Arthur Beauchamp novel, might be the best yet: it is deliciously witty, politically and ecologically timely, and filled with characters you’d happily spend time with. Deverell isn’t just one of our best crime/mystery writers. He’s one of our best writers, period.” — Brian Fawcett, author of Virtual Clearcut, winner of the 2003 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction

“No lawyer-turned-writer captures the hurly-burly of practicing real-life criminal law quite like William Deverell with his hilarious, enthralling plots. Stung is vintage Deverell at his razor-sharp best.” — Michael Slade, author of the Special X Mountie Noir thrillers