The detective author researches a century of crime in a new book

Sudbury -Jordan Buchanan, who retired in 2019 with the rank of a Detective Stafe Sergeant after a 30 -year career at the Greater Sudbury Police Service, said that he was always happy to write more than the average police officer, as he was demonstrated by his arrest.

“I can remember another officer who worked on arrest warrants with me in the 90s, and he always laughed when he had read my arrest warrants,” he said.

“He said,” You write them like a book, they are like a novel. “And I said:” Well, it's so wrong, because that's how I always did it. “He says:” No, no. … nobody really showed me how to write the arrest warrants.

Buchanan has just published with his first novel with the title Past ghosts echoed. He describes the book published self -published as crossing the thriller, the mystery and the police procedure.

The idea for the book that touches the 100 -year surveillance has been noted for 10 years and when he retired, he was able to attract him his attention.

He said he was inspired to examine old Ledger books from the Coniston Police Service in the 1920s. These main book books are now in the hands of the Sudbury region, and one of them is exhibited.

“All officers in a station house would write in the same major – the things they had done during the day, people who had arrested them, fines they had spent various things they had done,” said Buchanan.

The summary of the book is as follows:

The life of Detective Staff Sergeant Enoch Brown takes an unthinkable turn after a lightning strike during a solo canoe trip. When he wakes up, he becomes a living, fragmented visions, memories that do not belong to him.

He desperately responds to a psychiatrist who unlocks an astonishing discovery through hypnosis: Henoch has inherited “echo memories”, lively memories that were from his parents and grandparents, which were all police officers in Sudbury.

Each echo memory opens a window in unresolved cases from the past of his family and extends to police work over a century.

Driven by a deep sense of justice and the unshakable connection to the legacy of his family, Henoch is reopened these long -lasting cases. With the help of the latest forensic techniques and modern examination methods, he discovers truths that its predecessors could never have imagined, and loved crimes that have remained in the shade for decades.

“I wanted to look at a period of 100 years of police work, and I couldn't find a vehicle to really do it,” said Buchanan. “I mean, I even thought about time travel and all possible unusual ideas until I hit the idea of ​​these echo memories, which is only an invention of me.”

He said some of the cases that take place between the 1920s and 1970s were inspired by real life, and you are actually a real case: “And I have changed a lot of details and names and something like that because it is a fictional novel.

“But everything is based on police practices at the time they take place, and the current police practices, as the detective solves them today.

“I try to make it as realistic as a police process as possible, while at the same time leaving as a thriller and a bit of historical novel for people.”

It is not unusual that Buchan's book would examine the idea of ​​cold cases because he did this for part of his career, even though it sounds as if his career had addressed almost every aspect of police work.

One of the cases he worked was the top-class murder of Renée Sweeney from 1998, which was broken 20 years later thanks to the progress in DNA profile technology. Robert Steven Wright was found guilty of her murder in 2023.

Buchan's fictitious detective also uses the DNA profiling technology to crack a cold case.

On Thursday, May 15th, from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. refreshments and museum trips will take place in the Sudbury Region Police Museum “Past Ghosts Echoed” in the Sudbury Region Police Museum. Buchanan said he also had a book that signed in the chapters of Sudbury in June.

Otherwise, the book on its website Bay Used Books and the Kukagami General Store is available.