A look back at a Canadian detective's career in homicide.

Steve Ryan has ostensibly worked several facets related to crime-solving. Beat cop, homicide, cold cases, journalism- this memoir is his account of his decision to solve crime and the nearly two decades he spent doing just that. His novel is broken into eight separate case studies, dedicating ample time to his experience with each. Presumably chronologically.

I would like to give this memoir a 3.5, but since I cannot I have decided to round up. The included stories are heart-breaking, delicately portrayed, and gripping.

Each section begins and ends with erroneous prose with more sprinkled throughout that felt vibrant and unique at first- but was nearly grating by the end of the book. I don't think I need to be reminded repeatedly about how Toronto's harsh winters are a stark contrast to the cruel act of murder. Ryan also started to feel a bit disingenuous by the sixth or so time he waxed philosophical about how homicide is a taxing field that took him away from his family at all odd hours, though he couldn't imagine doing anything else.

As this is his story to tell, I cannot advise Steve Ryan how to edit his narrative. Being a frequent true crime consumer, however, I would have liked to see more information on how each crime directly affected the community at large or more procedural information and less flowery language speculating about the lives these victims might have led. or how he wanted to cry but was too stoic to do so.

I will however grant credit where credit is due for a career hard won and a largely unbiased rendering of the short-comings of the criminal justice system. Overall, this was a very compelling read choosing to evoke raw emotion over inciting tangents (though there was ample opportunity). I would recommend this to someone who would like a cursory glimpse at the dark side of humanity without feeling bogged down by specific forensic details beyond what is needed to bring each case to its conclusion. Also great for readers who hate delving into unsolved crimes.

[Thank you to NetGalley and DunDurn Press for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.]

Excellent book containing cases that haunt the author, a retired homicide detective in Toronto. I enjoy true crime and always have had a soft spot for the first responders that have to deal with the gruesome, often heartbreaking scenes they see. This book, The Ghosts That Haunt Me, really drove home not only the trauma, but the details, the intensity of the investigations, and the extra heartbreak when solutions aren't found, red tape gets in the way, or when the victim is a child...

This is an intense read, but so very worth the journey. The author does a very good job and made me feel as if I were a fly on the wall. I learned several things along the way and of course, my heart hurt for the crime victims and the first responders.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women who do these jobs. Thank you Steve Ryan, for doing an incredible job with The Ghosts That Haunt Me.

If you are a true crime junkie like I am, you'll want to read this. Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and publisher for an ARC at my request.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
Awesome non fiction book. Very interesting and descriptive. Well written.
Highly recommend this is if you like true crime and are interested in what it takes to solve these real life mysteries.

Thank you to NetGalley, Dundurn Press, and the author for sharing this ARC with me in exchange for my honest feedback.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book and its level of writing. I went into it with the bar set pretty low because I usually don't put homicide detective and talented writer in the same category. But Steve Ryan really impressed me and I enjoyed his unique outlook and his writing style.

The stories that Steve shares from his time as a homicide detective are incredibly heavy and hard to read. I probably wouldn't have picked this up to read at a bookstore because of the nature of the content, but I really do believe these are stories that need to be shared and the victims need to be remembered.

I loved how the author took us behind the scenes of the investigation and shared what it's really like working on these horrible cases. And I really appreciated the fact that he told the story of the victim and did not spend the whole chapter talking about the perpetrator. He was able to weave these stories in with what was going on in his own personal life, and how these crimes have stayed with him even after retiring.

I truly believe writing and reading can be cathartic while processing trauma, and I think Steve Ryan did a great job sharing his experience while trying to heal and get closure from everything that happened. This story is not a fun or easy book to read, but I do think it will stay with me for a long time.

Thanks again to NetGalley, Dundurn Press, and Steve Ryan for sharing this book with me. I will definitely read whatever he puts out next.

Steve Ryan’s new memoir, The Ghosts That Haunt Me: Memories of a Homicide Detective (Dundurn 2022), is an anthology-style text that recounts some of Ryan’s most memorable cases as a homicide and cold case detective with the Toronto Metropolitan Police. Across his career of over a decade, Ryan walks the reader through several infamous murder cases from Toronto’s history, and it is a thoroughly interesting book for those fascinated by Canadian true crime.

Ryan has been involved with the investigations of over one hundred homicides during his career with the Toronto Police, and some of those cases continue to stick in his mind as the most complex and haunting of his career. Now retired, Ryan’s focus has changed, but he still feels largely defined by his former career. In this book, Ryan addresses six cases he investigated and solved that defined his time as a detective.

Overall, this book was a fascinating read. This felt less like a memoir—although it is structured by Ryan’s investigative voice—and more like an anthology of true crime stories. None of these cases were familiar to me, but they might be to someone from the Toronto area. Either way, Ryan offers an inside perspective on the case beyond the news headlines, and recounts in great detail the personal and investigative elements of the cases. I discovered new and truly harrowing Canadian crimes that I had never heard of, and Ryan’s clear, cool, and straightforward writing style was refreshing and direct.

It seems that many police memoirs have this kind of episodic, case-based structure. Although some police memoirs attempt to make a larger point out of this structure, which can be a problem, Ryan’s writing seems less interested a social commentary and more focused on the lesser-known facts of famous Toronto cases. Still, this kind of apolitical writing can pose its own problems in reference to positionality, power dynamics, and the willingness to work for an organization that has actively caused harm in the past. These kinds of memoirs are therefore a bit fraught in my view: the stories are important, as are the victims whom they involve, but the position of the author remains at issue when thinking self-reflexively about the role of law enforcement in this country. The solution to reading this genre of true crime is, perhaps, what we should always do when reading memoir: to pay attention to perspective and positionality, even if such things are not explicitly stated in the text itself.

For Ryan’s part, his focus seems to remain almost exclusively on the victims whose cases he endeavoured to solve, and on the families who he attempted to provide closure for. Although he dedicates his memoir to both victims and his colleagues in law enforcement, this is a bit at odds with the content of his book, which centralizes the histories and stories of the victims of homicides, no matter how strange the case at hand.

All in all, while I feel largely ambivalent about the police memoir genre as a whole, the stories in The Ghosts That Haunt Me are fascinating, and Ryan’s writing made for an interesting and fast-paced read! Going in with open eyes, reading this book can be a rewarding experience.

Please add The Ghosts That Haunt me to your Goodreads shelf.
Don’t forget to follow True Crime Index on Twitter and please visit our Goodreads for updates on what we’re reading! You can find Rachel on her personal @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.

About the Writer:

Rachel M. Friars (she/her) is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She holds a BA and an MA in English Literature with a focus on neo-Victorianism and adaptations of Jane Eyre. Her current work centers on neo-Victorianism and nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history, with secondary research interests in life writing, historical fiction, true crime, popular culture, and the Gothic. Her academic writing has been published with Palgrave Macmillan and in The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies. She is a reviewer for The Lesbrary, the co-creator of True Crime Index. Rachel is co-editor-in-chief of the international literary journal, The Lamp, and regularly publishes her own short fiction and poetry. Find her on Twitter and Goodreads.

A digital copy of this book was graciously provided to True Crime Index from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This book told the story of several murder cases from the perspective of the detective who worked them and the impact these horrific murders had on him. We as humans can only handle so much horror and grief before it begins to seep into our off duty lives as well. These cases of innocent children tortured and slowly dying profoundly impacted this officer of the law in every aspect of his life.
I found this to be an eye-opening and well written book. I do recommend it.

As a fan of true crime, I really enjoyed getting to read a book written by a former detective. While reading the cases, it is no wonder these ones are some of the ghosts that haunt him. They are heartbreaking stories.

Thank you to @dundurn for sending me a complimentary finished copy of The Ghosts that Haunt me so I could read and review it.

The Ghosts that Haunt Me is the memoir of current CP Crime Reporter and formed City of Toronto Homicide Detective, Steve Ryan. I find it impossible to critique memoirs like this, they can be so close to a person, and deal with some incredibly difficult things.

This book is laid out nicely into eight chapters, an introduction and conclusion at the start and end, and six sections in the middle, each covering a specific investigation that Ryan took part in throughout his career.

Many of these were highly publicized, google can bring up countless details for anyone who wants to learn more, but that's not the same as a first hand account of an officer during the case.

I absolutely loved this read. Parts were difficult to read, especially when I consider where I was during each investigation (a teen in Toronto during more than one), but I think this book is incredibly important and should be picked up by many readers. Specifically, I think readers who like detective, police procedural books should pick this up, to get a feeling of what a real detective can be feeling and how they are impacted by the types of stories/cases we love to devour.

I love reading true crime, and stories set in Toronto so this book really caught my interest.

I know of Steve Ryan from being the crime analyst on CP24 currently, and knew he was a former homicide detective but it was startling to see a small snippet of the high profile cases he had worked on. It’s also not just a retelling of the cases themselves, but he really dives into his mindset and how much these cases affected his mental state and his home life - being on call and missing out on dinners, special occasions, etc.

Content warning: there are a number of cases that have to do with child abuse.

To that respect, even though I can fully appreciate that cases related to children would certainly haunt anyone, I maybe hoped there would be some other types of cases discussed (as 4 out of the 6 in this book have to do with children).

I did also find some of the writing a bit repetitive at times, like the sentence flows and observations were stated and then repeated in more or less the same sentiment later on as well. Not just with musings on the cases, but also very specific things about himself were repeated (ie. the motorcycling down the Lake Shore). I almost feel like these cases were maybe written with gaps between them and so maybe forgot that something was already previously mentioned, so when put all together, it came across as a bit repetitive. But in that case, that’s more to do with the editing really then..

Overall though, I couldn’t put this book down. There were some cases I was familiar with from the news and others that I was surprised to never have heard of before. An interesting read for people who love local history, and true crime.

Steve Ryan dives into some of the worst cases that he worked on as a homicide detective, the ones that have kept him awake at night.
As a true crime fan, I was all over this book, but as a mother - it was a heartbreaking read as many of the cases involved children. I could not read this all in one sitting, as I had to walk away and let my mind take a break from the heaviness within the book.

Good read, but heavy.

I always love true crime novels. This one has a bit of a different spin to it. Author Steve Ryan gives us an insider perspective on what life is like as a homicide detective. The cases he covers can be truly horrific, but this novel also looks at the mental and physical wear and tear that a person undergoes living in the constant presence of death. This is Steve Ryan’s story. A story that covers his early youth, and the reasons he became a cop, all the way through his retirement from the force, and his movement into private industry as a crime consultant. There is an almost lyrical quality to the writing that lends a poetic quality to the writing even though the subject matter is often disturbing. The book is really interesting if you can handle the nature of the cases Steve Ryan discusses. Trigger warning:they may not be for everyone. Review posted to Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram, Litsy, LibraryThing.

This is a very heavy book and most definitely will not be for everyone. It’s pretty trigger heavy as many true crime novels tend to be, so I recommend checking those out before picking this up.

With that being said, True Crime is my jam. It’s weird to say that I love this genre but I really do. I enjoy getting the behind the scenes look that many true crime novels offer - and this one delivers. We get a look into the cases that this retired homicide detective from Toronto, Ontario, Canada just can’t get out of his dead. He shares cases from his days in homicide as well as his days working on cold cases. It’s heartbreaking the things he saw while still needing to continue his day to day life.

Books like this are great because they allow a glimpse into the lives of those we trust to protect us - or get us justice in the event that it’s needed. This is a raw look into his thoughts and feelings and I imagine that writing this was cathartic for him. Keeping these cases inside has to hurt. It broke my heart to read them.

Again, I can’t really say I recommend this as a blanket statement like usual. It’s heavy. It’s true stories of violent crimes. It’s not for everyone. However, if you’re like me and love true crime novels and can handle the triggers brought up in this book, you should definitely pick it up.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

True Crime fans will definitely appreciate this book full of the most haunting homicide cases that the author has worked to investigate.

Make sure you’re in the right headspace going into this book because it can be heavy to read of such sad realities.

This was haunting and wonderfully written. True crime use to be all I read, so I’m pretty well read on crimes in the U.S. Because of this, it was interesting reading about the crimes from a different country, and it being from the detective’s point of view, just made it all…..more.

Thank you NetGalley and Dundurn Press for providing this ARC to review. ~I was given this book and made no commitments to leave my opinions, favorable or otherwise. ~

This was a fascinating book by a former Toronto homicide detective about some of the murders he investigated that particularly weighed on his mind. It also relates how the author became interested in police work and what he was doing after he retired from the force. This is a must read for true crime readers. I highly recommend this book to other true crime readers. I received an ARC of this book from Net Galley, and the opinion expressed is strictly my own.

"Homicide sticks to your skin. It follows you home when you arrive back from work late at night. It hangs in the air like a dark cloud(...) You can't wash it away, can't sleep it off, can never erase it from your memory."

Part memoir, part true crime procedural, "The Ghosts that Haunt Me" is an excellent book that manages to effectively blend raw details of (in)famous homicide investigations with brutal criticism of social norms. Some of the crimes Detective Steve Ryan has investigated captivated the attention of the whole world (see the tragic murder of Dr. Elana Fric in 2016 by her husband), others have primarily scarred local Torontonian communities. Regardless, the author made sure to focus the story on the victim first, and the perpetrator(s) second. Additionally, the author makes it clear just how soul-shattering investigations are for the police officers themselves. The books makes it clear why we need to rdemand proper mental health care for officers and first responders.

I liked that the author did not try to pick cases with shocking twists. With the exception of a single case (the murder of Holly Jones), all the other investigations detailed are the typical case, where the perpetrator is someone close to the victim. Be it intimate partner violence, or hard to read child abuse by parents/caregivers, the stories are uncomfortable in their closeness to home, the callousness of perpetrators who took advantage or revenge on those who depended on them, and/or loved them. Det. Ryan also takes polite aim at the media's reporting of crimes, which often gives center state to the perpetrator. Take the case of Dr. Fric's murder, where defenders of her surgeon husband were brought forward in the reporting of the story. "His patients called in to talk radio shows to testify to his brilliance. He was a lifesaver, a miracle worker even, they said." I can understand patients being grateful, but that didn't excuse reports where he was portrayed as a man who made a mistake in a moment of passion. The author is brutal in the simplicity of his rebuttal: "The good doctor persona, the accomplished athlete, the loving husband and father, these were all disguises (...). [Mohammed Fric] was a serial abuser and a murderer who ended the life of a talented doctor and ruined the happiness of his family. He just so happened to also be able to do brain surgery."

I also liked that, unlike American cop stories focused on the police point of view, Det. Ryan's memoir did not sound exasperated by the trial proceedings of obviously guilty individuals. "Locking people up in prison for the rest of their lives should be taken seriously." And in case you think this was done for show only, I can attest he is not the first Torontonian Detective I know who displays respect for the laws they were sworn to protect. (Funny side note: I was neighbor and friend with a still-working Detective who has worked with Det. Ryan--Toronto is a remarkable small city sometimes).

I highly recommend this book, to both true crime procedural fans, and people interested in understanding trauma. As the author puts it: "Homicide is the soft petals of funeral lilies, the dark earth thrown on a casket, the empty bedroom filled with the belongings of a person who will never again use them, the sleepless nights that haunt you when you're missing someone more than you ever knew you could. It's more these things, these sad experiences, than it is blood, guns, courtrooms, and criminals."

I enjoyed this book from Steve Ryan. He discusses the cases he's worked over the years and not only how they have affected him but the community of Toronto at large. The six cases he's chosen to scrutinize are each in turn horrifying and sad. Out of all of them, I think the three tourists from Europe affected me the most.

This is the second crime-related memoir I've read this year. I've found this book to be fascinating and haunting. I do like the author's writing style--you actually feel as if you're there, investigating with him. The grief over the wasted lives just pours off the pages.

Thank you to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this ARC. In return this is my honest review and all opinions are my own.

Ryan delves into some of the cases he can’t forget, bringing the victims to life, truly making sure they aren’t forgotten.

Welp. This is the saturation point. I’ve hit my limit for the moment in true crime.

RTC

***

HUGE thank you to NetGalley for generously providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Those of you who follow my reviews will know that I have been an avid true crime fan since I was 14, nearly 20 years now. (Hoo-boy, that's not a great feeling typed out.) At first you get into it because there's something lurid and fascinating about the ways evil people kill their victims--and if you try to deny it, you'll understand when you're older. Hopefully most people evolve past the pearl clutching and end up looking for the stories of justice sought and wrought. (The cold case chapter here really scratched that itch for me.)

My personal journey went from pearl clutching, to trying to understand, to fascination with psychology, to the evolution of forensics, to terror (thank you, Michelle McNamara), to actively seeking out the people fighting back the tide. As casual consumers, it's easy to forget that there's lingering sadness and horror behind every case that comes to light. That's evident and frank in THE GHOSTS THAT HAUNT ME.

Steve Ryan always wanted to be a cop, and when he made it to homicide, his passion for helping people and bringing justice to killers came to the forefront. It's easy to assume that because he's a retired homicide detective and was at one point an eager cadet that Ryan's storytelling capabilities would be null or drab. But he writes with vivid imagery and deep empathy for the people that suffer from these crimes. It's that empathy that made this book worth the at times very difficult read. Let me reiterate that true crime is like a second skin for me. I've many times considered entering the field somehow, especially in the fields of forensics or psychology. Being an ME would be like...my Wednesday-Addams-heart's desire.

I had to take breaks from this book.

Every case Ryan covers is particularly brutal in some manner, not always physical. And every case is easy to find reported in the local Toronto papers. (I checked, just to make sure he wasn't exaggerating.) As you go further and further with him on his career journey, you as a reader become acquainted with the fatigue that seeps through every turn of phrase. You shouldn't read THE GHOSTS THAT HAUNT ME while in a bad emotional place; however, I suggest putting it on your TBR and getting to it when you have a sunny day and feel relatively stable enough to handle what essentially amounts to peeling back the curtain on humanity's pits and caves.

And just for clarification: with all the unrest and, well, issues within police departments that have made their way to the front of our minds, rest assured that Steve Ryan's book does not read like the average policeman's. I'm well aware that these problems have always existed, that they're simply REALLY bad and glaring at the moment. All of that and more was why I opened my little Kindle file in great trepidation. The amount of empathy and deep-seated hope that wrongs can be righted are what pulled me through the final pages of THE GHOSTS THAT HAUNT ME. The pessimist inside my head could win, or I could hold on to the hope that things can change. That battle is constant, but maybe we could band together and march toward a brighter horizon.

The description of this book drew me in immediately. I really enjoy reading memoirs and when I saw this was one from a former homicide detective, I knew I had to check it out. It met my expectations and I’d absolutely read more of this genre.

Steve Ryan shares his experiences as a Toronto homicide detective with extensive detail and empathy. He selects six specific cases to describe and his compassion for the victims is evident throughout. He never highlighted the perpetrators, but focused on the victim, the victim’s family, and how the case was solved. Since I’m from the US, I hadn’t heard of any of these high-profile Canadian homicides. Steve writes with the benefit of hindsight since he’s retired from the police force and all these cases were solved. That sets this book apart from some other true crime that centers around unresolved crimes and cases.

It was interesting to read the parts of Ryan’s memoir where he described the toll the job took on him as well and his doubts about continuing at certain times in his career. He didn’t mince words or sugarcoat how taxing his job was, and how it affected his personal life and family. There were a few passages where I felt he was trying too hard to write about “teachable moments” and he veered into overly sappy and sentimental territory. Otherwise, I found the book easy to read and compelling.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in true crime, police procedures, homicide investigations, and memoir. If you’re a fan of Law & Order: SVU, I would put this on your must-read list.