Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson is a writer living in Toronto. He writes a wide variety of crime and crime-adjacent fiction, including novels, novellas, stories, and flash fiction. He is the past winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award (2021) as well as the Crime Writers of Canada Best Novella Award (2023) for “The Man Who Went Down Under.” He also placed third in the Toronto Star’s Short Story Contest (2022) for “The Unfinished Book.” 

In June 2024 his first novel The Road to Heaven is being published by Dundurn Press. The Road to Heaven is a noir mystery introducing artless young detective Patrick Bird, set in Toronto’s Parkdale during the tumultuous ’60s. Bird is a police academy dropout turned PI who works divorce cases and catches people with his camera doing dirty deeds in dark rooms. But his easy routine is shattered when he starts the Linklater case.

Alexis is currently working on a sequel to The Road to Heaven.

Writing

  • When his father took him camping for the first time, the boy was excited about what animals he might see in the wild. Imagine his excitement when he saw a moose -- which even his father, in all his years of experience -- had never seen.
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  • Marcy thought the house her ex-husband grew up in looked haunted. He never thought of it that way, but when he returns to tidy up after his father’s death he finds himself thinking maybe she was right after all.
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  • Not all private detectives live at home with their mother, but it’s lucky for Dalton Duckworth, head of the Duckworth Detective Agency, that he does because she’s the brains of the organization. When they’re not trading insults or eating breakfast the two team up to search for the Sun of Sumatra, the massive diamond in Joy Cleaver’s missing aigrette.
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  • Amy knows she shouldn’t open the door to the stranger on her stoop, but she does anyway. Peter is writing a book about Toronto’s famous bank robbers, The Boyd Gang, and she lives in the house that they hid out at after escaping the Don Jail. A key piece of Peter’s research lies right under her living room floor.
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Extra:
Appointment at Gunn Lake

In the chaotic days before the pandemic even had a name, Ralph and his wife Farrah leave the panic of Vancouver for their cabin at Gunn Lake. Ralph has a premonition that death is stalking him and he will catch the virus—that’s why he’s so happy to escape to the peace of their lake home.
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What I’m Reading

Eating People is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury "Well, aren't you just saying it's better to be neurotic, sensitive, and miserable than unimaginative, adjusted, and content? Is it really better?" "It's my belief that it is better," sa
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano So many... "Dust and literature have always gone hand in hand." or "You won't believe this, but he used to shower with a book. I swear. He read in the shower. How do I know? Easy. Almost all
Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie I have long ago given up asking Poirot questions beginning 'Why?' Like the Light Brigade 'Mine not to reason why, mine but to do or die,' though fortunately it has not yet come to dying. #lordedgwaredies #greatc
It Came From Memphis by Robert Gordon (And, as Dickinson liked to say, "If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much space.") or "It was almost bad to bring up his name," Crosswaithe says, "because then he would sh
Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu "You think? Now, take my advice, and never wait to thin, my dear; talk first, and think afterwards, that is my way; though indeed, I can't say I ever think at all. It is a very cowardly habit." #sheridanlef
Maigret in Montmartre (also Maigret at Piccratt's) by Simenon "Maigret rather suspected that he had developed a taste for bad luck and ill-temper and adopted them as his pet vices -- gloating over it just as some old men gloat over their chroni
Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan So many great quotes here: Bismark always said that only two men in Europe understood the issue -- he was one and the other was in an asylum. "He had," said Thomas, " a genius for backing into the li
Mary Anne by Daphne du Maurier She had no moment of joy, no elation, no sense of triumph -- only a pain in the heart and a feeling of shame. I will repay, saith the Lord -- so the words ran in her mother's worn Bible, but all that revenge had achiev
Fear Itself by Walter Mosley "You know neither one of us believes in coincidence, Milo." "Maybe not," he said. "But if there's a word for it there's a chance that it's true." #fearitself #waltermosley
Only Dead Fish Swim with the Current by Bill Jermyn He pulled a sheaf of notes from his pocket and said he had been at a Dale Carnegie personal development course the evening before in the Shelbourne Hotel. He began to take me through lists of the c
The Clarion by Nina Dunic "He seemed to hate most people, yet he was astonishingly sensitive in every regard, and I struggled to understand that, let alone see it as a cause. It was a mistake to think sensitive people would always be kind. I th
Dance of the Happy Shades by Alice Munro "But here comes the disclosure which is not easy for me: I am a writer. That does not sound right. Too presumptuous; phony, or at least unconvincing. Try again. I write. Is that better? I try to write. T
I looked at the ornaments on the desk. Everything standard and all copper. A copper lamp, pen set and pencil tray, a glass and copper ashtray with a copper elephant on the rim, a copper letter opener, a copper thermos bottle on a copper tray, copper
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman "The journey passes very pleasantly. The sun is up, the skies are blue, and murder is in the air." #thursdaymurderclub #richardosman #tuesdayclubmurders #penguin
The Best American Crime Writing 2005 ed. by Otto Pnzler and Thomas H. Cook, Intro by James Ellroy. "He's not a completely bad person," she told me. "He's a very likable person. I think his big problem was intelligence and no common se
Because by Andrew Steinmetz "Be quiet, Hombre," Transformer says. "I can hear you." "I wasn't doing anything." "Yeah, well, I can hear you thinking." That makes two of us. #greatcovergreatbook #because #andre
La Bete Humaine by Emile Zola "They were both genuinely inexperienced, in the childhood of the heart, that amazed innocence of first love that finds delight in the simplest caresses." File with "4:50 From Paddington" and "C
Nine and Death Makes Ten by Carter Dickson THIS IS A Genuine POCKET BOOK POCKET BOOK EDITION COMPLETE & UNABRIDGED Share this book with someone in uniform. KIND TO YOUR POCKET AND YOUR POCKETBOOK #greatcover #greatcoverprettygoodbook #carter
Exciting events: Yesterday: Torontohenge Today: Our Anniversary. Thirty years of love. Love you Lar!
The Loss of El Dorado by V.S. Naipaul "The law was to be obeyed but not followed." #thelossofeldorado #vsnaipaul #orangepenguin