Gerald Lynch: Omphalos

When Eugene DeLint, the head of Omphalos, is found murdered, Detective Kevin Beldon is called in, bringing along much personal and professional baggage: his wife Cynthia is a recent suicide, his absent son Bill is a disappointment, and his daughter Kelly, who began her legal career at Omphalos, is emotionally distant with him.

Kevin is still disturbed from his failure the year before to have solved the so-called Widower serial killings. He still suspects that the escaped Widower was connected to Omphalos, and secretly he views Eugene DeLint’s murder as a last chance to solve the Widower case and so absolve his wife of the sin of suicide.

A Professor mainly of Canadian literature at the University of Ottawa, earlier this year Gerald Lynch published the co-edited Alice Munro's Miraculous Art: Critical Essays. He has authored two books of non-fiction, Stephen Leacock: Humour and Humanity and The One and the Many: Canadian Short Story Cycles.

He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the gold award for short fiction in Canada’s National Magazine Awards. Omphalos is his sixth book of fiction