Mike Martin – Carol's Notebook

Author: Mike Martin

Mike Martin was born in Newfoundland on the East Coast of Canada and now lives and works in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a longtime freelance writer and his articles and essays have appeared in newspapers, magazines and online across Canada as well as in the United States and New Zealand. He is the author of Change the Things You Can: Dealing with Difficult People and has written a number of short stories that have published in various publications including Canadian Stories and Downhome magazine.

The Walker on the Cape was his first full fiction book and the premiere of the Sgt. Windflower Mystery Series. The Body on the T was the second book, Beneath the Surface is the third installment and A Twist of Fortune is the newest book in the series.

He is a member of Ottawa Independent Writers, Capital Crime Writers, the Crime Writers of Canada and the Newfoundland Writers’ Guild.

Excerpt: The schooners made the Banks Fishery possible and created one of the most remarkable and profitable fisheries ever seen in the world. For nearly a hundred years crews would venture out for three or four trips from May to October. Then they’d bring their fish back to Grand Bank for onshore salting and drying. People thought both the cod and the Banks Fishery would last forever but technological changes and greed would alter that projection. By the mid 1900’s, there had been a shift from the sailing schooners to more mechanized vessels and more effective methods for catching codfish. The vessels used enormous nets that hauled in large numbers of fish but devastated the cod population. Then the fish companies developed trawlers that swept up everything in their path and dragged the bottom of the ocean. By the 1980’s they were dredging the waters, scooping up everything. Soon they were joined by floating factory ships that caught and processed the fish...