When renovation expert Marissa Hamilton leaves behind a failed marriage, a cheating husband, and a tanked TV show, she arrives in Toronto with a fresh start, a tight production schedule, and one underwhelming ranch house to transform into a mansion. Her new solo series, Marissa's Mansions, should be the career reset she's meticulously planned for. Then her ex-husband breaks into her house in the middle of the night, and everything goes sideways.
What follows is less a crime novel than a study in applied project management. Marissa doesn't panic. She measures. She makes lists. She solves problems the only way she knows how: with precision, contingency planning, and an unsettling willingness to adapt her professional skill set to circumstances no production binder has ever anticipated.
Surrounded by a nosy neighbour armed with surveillance cameras and a municipal code clipboard, a sustainability-obsessed producer who quotes permit regulations like scripture, a volunteer organization that treats demolition debris as cultural heritage, and a one-woman camera crew who sees far more than she lets on, Marissa must keep her renovation on schedule while managing a secret that grows more complicated by the week.
This Old Body is a darkly comic crime novel about control, reinvention, and the terrifying competence of a woman who refuses to be derailed. It asks what separates a skilled professional from a calculating criminal, and whether the answer is really just a matter of what you happen to be working on.
Sharp, deadpan, and deeply Canadian.
