Hell and Gone Wins Silver Medal at IPPY Awards

Sam Wiebe has received a silver medal at the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards for his book, Hell and Gone—part of the critically-acclaimed Wakeland Detective Series

Hell and Gone is a mystery book about Dave Wakeland, a PI who has his life upended after he’s caught in a shooting. The police have a vested interest in finding the shooters, and so does the leader of the Exiles motorcycle gang. Both want Wakeland’s help. The deeper he investigates, the more connections he uncovers: a reclusive millionaire with ties to organized crime, an international security company with a sinister reputation, and a high-ranking police officer who seems to have a personal connection to the case. When the shooters themselves start turning up dead, Wakeland realizes the only way to guarantee his own safety, and that of the people he loves, is by finding out who hired the shooters and why.

In Hell and Gone the award-winning Wakeland Series delves further into the depths of Vancouver’s criminal underworld, keeping readers on their toes. Follow Dave Wakeland in the fourth installment of the series, Sunset and Jericho, which came out last month in April 2023.

Sam Wiebe has won the Crime Writers of Canada award, the Kobo Emerging Writers prize, and has been shortlisted for the Edgar, Hammett, Shamus, and City of Vancouver book prizes. His other titles include Never Going Back, Last of the Independents, and the Vancouver Noir anthology, which he edited. His first two books in the Wakeland Series are Invisible Dead and Cut You Down, which established themselves as some of the most authentic and acclaimed detective stories in Canada.

The Independent Publisher Book Awards were started in 1996 and are intended to bring recognition to the thousands of exemplary independent, self-published, and university titles published every year. Since its founding, over 5,500 books have received “IPPY” Awards and all the recognition, credibility, and increased sales that a book award can bring. The IPPY Awards reward those who exhibit the courage, innovation, and creativity to bring about change in the world of publishing.