Canada's Queen of Crime, Gail Bowen's first Joanne Kilbourn mystery, Deadly Appearances (1990), was nominated for the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada Best First Novel Award, and A Colder Kind of Death (1995) won the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel. The Winners' Circle, (2017) has been named a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel as of this book's first printing. In 2008, Reader's Digest named Bowen Canada's Best Mystery Novelist; in 2009 she received the Derrick Murdoch Award; and in 2018 she was recognized with the Crime Writers of Canada's Grand Master Award. In 2018, she was invested with the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, the province's highest honour. Now retired from teaching at the First Nations University, Gail Bowen lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.
