R. Murrey Haist

As a member of the Canada Council for the Arts, R. Murrey Haist is probably best known as an artist.

His paintings and works of pyrography – “drawing with fire,” on wood – hang in private collections around the world, and his designs, on bookmarks, book bags and posters, have supported fundraisers for the local library in Innisfil, where he resides.

As a gifted wordsmith much his poetry has been found in books and magazines.

Now Haist has become a published author of a thrilling mystery book trilogy.

In his own words that he lives to, “Painting are stories without words… and books are paintings through the words.”

His first book was Tuoyawon (too-ya-waun), a thriller that explores themes of love and betrayal, responsibility and guilt, and ends with a terrifying twist for protagonist ‘Chrissy.’

He was a little surprised when Ontario school boards chose the book for their high school reading lists – but with its direct prose, fast pacing and big themes, it’s not really all that surprising.

Haist has now completed the second book, Escape from Tuoyawon, carrying Chrissy farther along her journey into fear, remorse – and responsibility.

“There seemed to be a natural continuation from where the last book left off,” Haist says. Chrissy’s sense of confusion, and entrapment in Book One “needed to be the start of the second book,” he explains.

Built around Chrissy’s desperate attempt to escape from her circumstances, while coming to grips with the consequences of her own actions, Escape from Tuoyawon ends with “a twist that could not have been imagined.”

Tuoyawon was planned as a trilogy, and Haist is already in the midst of writing the third book in the series. Although he has mapped out the plot and an outcome, Chrissy still has the power to evolve - and surprise, he says.

“Even though I have already determined the final outcome of the last book, I am still watching her movements as if from an outsider – and anxiously waiting to determine her personal involvement,” Haist says.

Just as he allows the canvas to guide his hand, as an artist, “In my writings, I just follow my characters and report what I see going on,” he says. “In both cases I have an emotional contact with the subject of my writings and my canvas. This allows their individual expressions to emerge, on both the canvas and the page.”

Haist's writings are considered as cozy mysteries as is Agatha Christie's and Louise Penny's.

His narration guides the readers through psychological terror and suspense of Chrissy's practice of deception and the pending fallout for that deception. Her encounters leave her horrified for her own existence.

Haist's love for the appearance of deception (things are rarely what they seem) as with those of Alfred Hitchcock guides his hand in these writings.

Escape from Tuoyawon follows Chrissy's struggle to deal with her entrapment only to find it take a dramatic unexpected turn.

As suspenseful, thrilling and compelling as these works are there is no gore or valance ... only the threat