Stephen Kimber

It is the summer of 1940 in Halifax, Canada, the North American city closest to the shooting, bombing war in Europe. The nine-year-old daughter of a local Royal Navy commander has just been murdered. Her father is missing, probably the murderer, possibly dead. Her mother is missing, too, maybe in Boston, but maybe dead as well. 

To complicate matters for Halifax Police Detective Mick Blackwell, the Royal Navy has claimed jurisdiction over what he believes is his murder investigation. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill has just green-lit Operation Fish, the largest and most secret movement of any country’s material wealth in history. It was an audacious gamble to ship Britain’s entire gold reserves across the storm-tossed, U-boat-infested North Atlantic to Halifax to prevent them from falling into Hitler’s hands. If Churchill’s gambit fails and the gold is sunk or captured, Britain won’t have the resources to continue the fight, and Germany will triumph by default.

Blackwell must somehow connect the dots from his off-the-books murder investigation to Operation Fish, solve more than one murder, and foil a Nazi plot. His investigation will take him from Marlborough Woods, home to Halifax’s South End “cottage” mansions, to Africville, its segregated Black community on the other/wrong side of town, and then to Boston into the heart of an America First/Nazi espionage cell and back to Halifax to change the course of the war’s history. 

Oh, and in between, Blackwell—a troubled soul who struggles with alcohol and still suffers from “shell shock” triggered by the traumas he experienced in World War I—will finally find the love he hasn’t known he’d been missing for more than 20 years. But is Vera really who she claims to be?

Traitor’s Game, the first in a projected series of Mick Blackwell novels set in Halifax during the War, will be released by Nimbus/Vagrant on October 6, 2026.

What Others Say

Halifax, 1940: a brutal murder shatters the uneasy calm of a city engulfed by the Second World War. Warships crowd the harbour and strangers fill the streets as detective Mick Blackwell takes on a spiraling case that pits him against powerful authorities. Traitor’s Games is a taut, richly textured historical mystery that introduces a sympathetic detective haunted by trauma. And what a portrait of war-time Halifax! More please!

— Ken McGoogan
Shadows of Tyranny

Fans of Foyle’s War will love this riveting, fast-paced tale of murder, espionage, and a detective’s torment as he struggles for redemption. Stephen Kimber vividly recreates wartime Halifax in a gripping mystery that will keep you guessing – and reading.

– Dean Jobb 
author of A Gentleman and a Thief
and Empire of Deception

Stephen Kimber is an expert in the history of Halifax during World War II, as evidenced by his nonfiction book, Sailors, Slackers, and Blind Pigs. Now, he has put that knowledge and setting to brilliant use in Traitor’s Game. Deeply realized characters, superb writing, and an intricate and gripping plot kept me hooked from beginning to end. Kimber has created a wonderful lead character in Mick Blackwell, the detective and wounded war veteran who investigates and unravels a knotted web of secrets: military, political, and some all too personal. Readers will be anticipating the next adventure with Mick Blackwell.”

–Anne Emery
Crime Writers of Canada Award–winning author of Though the Heavens Fall

Kimber’s police procedural draws on a masterful use of little-known but intriguing historical detail, blending fact and fiction with ease. His voice is distinctive, and he evokes the city and its era with complete authority. Wonderful stuff.

—John DeMont
author of The Long Way Home: A Personal History of Nova Scotia 

In Traitor’s Games, Stephen Kimber brings us a tangled mystery of murders, epic wartime political intrigues, and complicated loves— all skillfully resolved by a tragically flawed Halifax policeman and a master storyteller.

— Linden MacIntyre
Giller-prize winning author of The Bishop’s Man and The Deacon, being published in Canada in March 2027.