Dr. Halloran expressed her interest in crime fiction to me like this: Crime fiction is about what happens when societies break down around the edges. Even those societies that we sometimes stereotype as the “utopia to the north” have huge, structural problems that need to be addressed, and crime is where those troubles are manifest. Growing up as a Canadian in the US, I was often, and still am, met with claims that the country I come from is some kind of socialist, eco-friendly paradise.

It’s strange to be drawn to criticisms, rather than praise, of one’s home country. But criticism of Canada sounds a lot more like the country I know than the one everybody tells me I come from. Most of my cousins work in freezing and terrible conditions in Northern Canadian oil fields. One of my aunts has surrendered her child, when she was 17, to the Canadian foster care system. I’ve followed with dismay the corruption scandals in the recent Canadian election — one of my uncles, a politician, was caught up in this, and through his own corrupt actions, he was removed from his election. This is no utopia, but it’s the country that I’ve learned to love.

I recognize that country in the essays here. I recognize it in essays like “The Disadvantages of Abortion Laws in Canada,” and “The Canadian Government and Indigenous Children in Foster Care,” which talk about the difficulties of reproductive and childcare laws in Canada. And in essays that deal with the difficulties of gentrification, which is a double-edged sword: gentrification proves that your country is a desirable place to live, but in that desirability lies the seeds of pushing out people who can’t afford to stay there anymore. There are a lot of First Nations and women’s issues in this anthology, and the author of “First Nations Women in Canada” pulls both of these themes together in an apt meditation: “If Nora had received help from the police at the beginning of the book, she would not have had to endure such dangerous situations by herself and they may have helped her find Bonnie in a faster manner.”