JIM NAPIER

Born and raised in California, Jim Napier came to Canada in 1964, completing his master’s and doctoral studies at the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He moved to Quebec in 1971, where he taught a wide range of courses at the college and university levels, including art history, seventeenth-century British political philosophy, biomedical ethics, environmental ethics, urban design, international studies, mystery fiction and creative writing. In 2003, he retired from teaching to write full-time.

A lapsed member of WinOs (Writers in Oxford), and a member in more-or-less good standing of both the Crime Writers of Canada and the Mystery Writers of America, Jim writes a regular column, titled Suspended Sentences, reviewing mystery and crime fiction for the Sherbrooke Record, Quebec’s largest English-speaking newspaper outside of Montreal. He has also published non-fiction articles in both the popular and academic press.

Jim has travelled extensively in Canada and the U.S., Britain, and Europe, and has been both a field educator and project coordinator for environmental and development projects in South America. His other interests include golf, cooking, American football, vintage movies and landscape photography. His photographs of urban landscapes in Canada and the U.S. can be found on the University of Washington’s Cities and Buildings Database, at http://content.lib.washington.edu/buildingsweb/. Jim is also a founding member of Kindred Spirits, a single-malt appreciation society based in Lennoxville, Quebec. He and his wife Roya live in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

His recently-completed manuscript, the first of a projected series featuring DCI Colin McDermott of the London Metropolitan Police, is entitled Impurely Academic.