Move over Hercule Poirot and Adam Dalglish. John Delano has supplanted both as the most endearing sleuth of modern fiction.

Crimes Against My Brother by David Adams Richards (Doubleday Canada, hardcover, 416 pages, $32.95).

David Adams Richards is a writer who knows the human soul and reveals it to us in dialogue, plot and inner reflection. It’s the author’s extraordinary access to the truth of being human that makes us care about his characters. We know them, and what brings them joy, pain, hope, despair, guilt and peace matters to us.