Missing from the Village

About Missing from the Village

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book
Shortlisted for the 2021 Toronto Book Awards
An Indigo Best Book of 2020
Winner of the Brass Knuckles Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book (Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence)

 
The tragic and resonant story of the disappearance of eight men–the victims of serial killer Bruce McArthur–from Toronto’s queer community.

In 2013, the Toronto Police Service announced that the disappearances of three men–Skandaraj Navaratnam, Abdulbasir Faizi, and Majeed Kayhan–from Toronto’s gay village were, perhaps, linked. When the leads ran dry, the search was shut down, on paper classified as “open but suspended.” By 2015, investigative journalist Justin Ling had begun to retrace investigators’ steps, convinced there was evidence of a serial killer. Meanwhile, more men would go missing, and police would continue to deny that there was a threat to the community. In early 2019, landscaper Bruce McArthur was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of eight men. There is so much more to the story than that.
 
    Based on more than five years of in-depth reporting, Missing from the Village recounts how a serial killer was allowed to stalk the city, how the community responded, and offers a window into the lives of these eight men and the friends and family left behind. Telling a story that goes well beyond Toronto, and back decades, Justin Ling draws on extensive interviews with those who experienced the investigation first-hand, including the detectives who eventually caught McArthur, and reveals how systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia, and the structures of policing fail queer communities.