Happy book birthday to the Audible Original CHINA WHITE by Sarah Richards, a fast-paced, gritty, female-driven crime thriller set in Vancouver’s underbelly at the height of the opioid epidemic, out today!
“China White is gritty and thought-provoking crime fiction. Sarah Richards is a writer to watch.”
—Sam Wiebe, author of Invisible Dead and Cut You Down
“Sarah Richards is an exciting new writer, whose China White series promises to offer a riveting, propulsive story as failed officer Styvie Savard navigates the chasm between Vancouver’s loftiest vision of itself and the hard truths exposed by the opioid crisis in that city. Savard is reminiscent of some of the best noir detectives, and I’ll be keen to see where Richards takes this intriguing new series.”
—Elisabeth de Mariaffi, author of The Devil You Know and Hysteria
“Sarah Richards’ China White balances entertaining, propulsive storytelling with crime writing that exposes the desperate, grimy underbelly of a wealthy city.”
—Kevin Chong, author of My Year of the Racehorse
“Sarah Richards has a knack for sharp observations and down-and-out characters that provide an engrossing commentary on the peculiarities of contemporary urban life. Her writing will draw you in from the first page.”
—Ellen Keith, author of The Dutch Wife
Styvie Savard was a damn good cop—before she made a mistake that cost her everything. Now she lives in her car, works a dead-end job, and scrapes by on the fumes of a dwindling savings account. Life couldn’t get much worse, until it does. One morning on the way to work, Styvie hits a sixteen-year-old, Dharma, with her car. When the injured girl flees the scene, Styvie finds that she can’t leave well enough alone.
Propelled by ghosts from her own complicated past, Styvie is determined to find the girl and make things right. In her pursuit, Styvie confronts Dharma’s brother, Jeremy, a violent addict working as a distributor in a fentanyl drug ring; and Dharma’s husband, Glen, who heads a pseudo-eastern-religious cult.
Styvie becomes obsessed with freeing the teenaged Dharma from Glen’s clutches and bringing Jeremy down. In doing so, she forms a tenuous and clandestine arrangement with her ex-boyfriend, Detective Constable Dennison Lee. Going undercover reignites her love for law enforcement and polishes her rusty sleuthing skills. At first it seems as if she could slide right back into her old life, but when Styvie develops an unshakable bond with Dharma, the lines between right and wrong blur.
In the end, Styvie must make a choice: chase down her old badge and recoup her losses or follow her instinct and save Dharma from a future she doesn’t deserve.
Sarah Richards’s first novel manuscript, China White, was a finalist in the 2018 HarperCollins Best New Fiction Prize. Her short stories, reviews, and interviews have appeared in carte blanche, prism international, The Puritan, Rusty Toque, Room Magazine, The Cardiff Review, The Danforth Review, Eclectica, Fox Adoption, and UNBUILD walls, and she has published non-fiction work with Lonely Planet and BBC.com, among others. She received an MFA from the University of British Columbia in 2017. In addition to her writing work, she teaches English at Langara College and volunteers as a literacy mentor for inner-city kids in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.