Het werk van Seán Haldane wordt gekenmerkt door een diepe betrokkenheid bij psychologie en menselijke ervaring, waarbij introspectieve thema's worden verweven met narratieve kracht. Zijn schrijven verkent vaak de complexiteit van identiteit en iemands plaats in de wereld, met behoud van een unieke stem die resoneert bij lezers die op zoek zijn naar dieper begrip. Haldane's benadering van literatuur wordt gevormd door zijn uitgebreide ervaring in diverse disciplines, waardoor hij zijn creaties kan voorzien van frisse perspectieven. Zijn oeuvre presenteert een boeiende verkenning van de menselijke psyche.
In Victoria, 1869, a mutilated body is discovered in the forest: Dr McCrory, an American 'alienist' whose methods include phrenology, Mesmerism, and sexual-mystical 'magnetation'. Chad Hobbes, newly arrived from England, is the policeman who must solve the crime. Could the murderer be a Tsimshian medicine man, Wiladzap, who is immediately arrested? But everyone who has known McCrory--respectable or not--has something to hide.
An Evil Tale I Heard is the sequel to The Devil's Making in which the English policeman Chad Hobbes solves the mystery of the discovery of the mutilated body of a British settler on Vancouver Island, in the Pacific in 1869. In 1871 Chad and his Tsimshian wife Lukswaas are on their way to England when Chad is asked to solve a new murder on another British island, Prince Edward Island, in the Atlantic. Its Mi'kmaq name is Abegweit: 'Cradled on the Waves'. The Mi'kmaq are now outnumbered by French and English-speaking settlers and the island is in debt and under pressure to join Canada. Marie Évangéline, the daughter of one politician and wife of another, is found savagely beaten to death. Who is trying to kill whom? Who is in love with whom? These questions reveal great goodness, but 'an evil tale'. Having travelled from sea to sea, Chad is again pulled between law and justice in a world where secrets are well hidden and protected.