by Matt Lubbers-Moore

In September, Anthony Bidulka released his most recent Russell Quant title, Quant. Fifteen years since the last release, Bidulka has brought Quant back. This time he is dealing with a parent that needs more care than he’s used to her needing, a distant relationship, and feelings about getting older.

Bidulka was born in 1962 and raised near Prud’homme, Saskatchewan. He grew up in a Ukrainian-Canadian family and later made his home in Saskatoon. His education at the University of Saskatchewan included degrees in psychology, education, and commerce. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked in several fields, including teaching and accounting, ultimately leaving a career as a chartered professional accountant to pursue fiction in 1999.

Bidulka’s background is important to understanding his fiction. Rather than treating Saskatchewan merely as scenery, he frequently makes the province—its cities, rural communities, people, history, and culture—an essential part of his stories. He has described his purpose as telling stories about underrepresented people and underrepresented places in an accessible and entertaining way. Saskatchewan, particularly rural Saskatchewan, has become one of the defining elements of his literary identity.

Bidulka introduced readers to Russell Quant in Amuse Bouche in 2003. Quant is a private investigator living in Saskatoon, and the character represented something relatively unusual in Canadian mainstream mystery fiction at the time: an openly gay protagonist at the center of a continuing detective series. Bidulka has described Quant as a half-Ukrainian, half-Irish, gay Saskatchewan prairie native, former police officer, ex-farm boy, traveler, wine drinker, and wisecracking private investigator.

The first novel established many of the characteristics that would distinguish the series. Quant is a professional investigator, but he is also an intensely personal character whose relationships, friendships, sexuality, family connections, and sometimes messy personal life are as important to the books as the crimes themselves.

In Amuse Bouche, Quant is hired to locate a missing groom, taking his investigation far beyond Saskatchewan and eventually to France. The international travel that became another trademark of the series was therefore present from the beginning.

But enough from me, let’s hear from Anthony Bidulka himself!!

“Pretty much since the day I announced the final Russell Quant book, Dos Equis, fans of the series have been contacting me about the possibility of a follow up book. At first, I worried it meant readers would not accept anything else I published. I soon realized it was nothing more than a wonderful compliment to the world of Russell Quant. People wanted to spend more time with him and were sorry he was gone.

“For me, the Russell Quant books have always been more than mystery novels. They are about providing a space to tell stories about people and places underrepresented in crime fiction. Although I never say never, when the final Quant book was published in 2012, I was happy with where I left Russell and his family and friends. If that was the last we saw of them, I would be satisfied. I didn’t really think about bringing him back. The story had been told.

“When I was wrapping up the Merry Bell trilogy a couple of years ago, my mind naturally turned to: what’s next? That’s when it struck me. It had been almost 15 years since I last wrote about Russell, when he was still a young man navigating life, relationships, and his career as a PI.

“I realized Russell would now be a man in his 50s. Where was he now? Did his PI firm succeed? What about his relationship with JP, his friends, his mother, his dogs Barbra and Brutus? I had no idea what those answers were as I hadn’t thought about it. The characters would have changed. Their lives had changed. My interest was piqued. Maybe there was more story to tell. Before you know it, I was writing the ninth book.”

Upcoming LGBTQ Mysteries for October 2026:

Quant by Anthony Bidulka
Out September 30, Bon Vivant
Repeated from last month. When a beloved local resident is found dead at the bottom of a gorge in Howell, Saskatchewan, the evidence points to suicide. But private investigator Russell Quant isn’t convinced. Returning to his hometown, Russell begins uncovering secrets beneath the community’s peaceful surface, where greed, deception, and old grudges threaten generations of family legacy. His investigation takes him from the Canadian prairie to the Caribbean as he searches for the truth. The deeper Russell digs, the clearer it becomes that someone is determined to keep this death from being investigated.