On the night of the Rocket Richard Riot in 1955, the legendary Cartier Dagger is stolen from Montreal's Sun Life Building. Many believe the dagger gives whoever possesses it mystical powers, and its journey through history is as spectacular as it is bloodstained. The same night, a police informer is found murdered in a nearby park with a dagger wound to his heart. But who murdered him, and why?

Thirteen years later, Pierre Elliott Trudeau is prime minister, and the separatist movement is gaining momentum in Quebec. The case is still unsolved, and a young constable named Émile Cinq-Mars is asked to investigate.

Suspenseful and labyrinthine, River City is at once a prequel to John Farrow's bestselling novels City of Ice and Ice Lake, a panoramic window onto a city's storied past, and a brilliant novel of politics, greed, murder and myth.