David Adams Richards on his new novel, Crimes Against My Brother

There is no black and white truth in the novels of David Adams Richards. But there is a whole lot of grey ... grey in the sense of moral uncertainty. His latest book, Crimes Against My Brother, is chockablock with gossip, betrayal, violence and lying. Oh and there's a little murder, a bit of adultery and some corporate skull-duggery in there too.

But according to David Adams Richards, the book is a tribute to the strength of the human spirit. The central characters are cousins, best childhood buddies who get trapped in a snowstorm on the side of Good Friday Mountain in 1974, at the age of 15. When none of the adults responsible for them even notice they've gone missing, they make a pact and trust only each other ... a pact that will haunt them.

David Adams Richard has written 15 novels, including Nights Below Station Street, The Friends of Meager Fortune and Mercy Among the Children.

He has been nominated for, and won, many awards, including the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is a member of the Order of Canada.

He often writes about life on and around the Miramichi River, in New Brunswick, which is where he born in 1950, one of six children. He wrote his first novel at the age of twenty, and he hasn't stopped since.