Shane Peacock comes from seven generations of Canadians who have lived in the Port Hope and Cobourg area of south-central Ontario, the setting for some of his stories. Though he resides near there today, he was born in Thunder Bay, Ontario in 1957, and raised in northern Ontario in the pulp-and-paper town of Kapuskasing, Ontario, where he attended Kapuskasing District High School. He attended Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, where he received a B.A. Honours in English Literature and History, and then studied with novelist Robertson Davies while finishing his M.A at the University of Toronto.
He began his writing career as a journalist, publishing his work in magazines including Saturday Night, Reader’s Digest, and Sports Illustrated. His subjects reflected his interest in extraordinary people who do dramatic things — colourful characters with great ambition and desire. He profiled high-wire walkers, sumo wrestlers, movie stars, freak-show performers, rodeo bull riders and others.
His book “The Great Farini,” published by Penguin Books Canada, explored the life of a Port Hope area man who walked over Niagara Falls on a high wire, invented the human cannonball act, explored the Kalahari Desert and did many other remarkable things. The Great Farini was also the subject of a play written for The 4th Line Theatre, an innovative outdoor theatre company that presents plays in the countryside near Millbrook, Ontario. His drama debuted there in 1994, complete with live high-wire performances by a member of Cirque du Soleil and other circus acts.
Peacock's play-writing continued with “The Devil and Joseph Scriven,” about the mysterious life and death of the writer of the famous hymn "What A Friend We Have In Jesus". This sometimes dark story included live, full-immersion baptisms in a pond, drownings, and other strange events. In 2006, Peacock completed a 4th Line trilogy with a critically-acclaimed play about Canadian spies called "The Art of Silent Killing", which featured actors trained in expert hand-to-hand combat techniques.
Shane began writing for television in 1999 with his documentary about Farini. Called “Dangerous Dreams,” it was produced by History Television as a season premiere for the series “The Canadians”. It featured a stunning high-wire walk by Shane’s friend Jay Cochrane, a world-record holder who carried a tiny camera on his chest during his performance and shot the walk from a frightening height. In 2001, Shane’s second documentary effort “The Passion of Joseph Scriven” also aired on History Television. In May 2004, “Team Spirit,” which he wrote and co-produced, appeared on the CTV national network to a wide audience and critical acclaim, telling the tragic and triumphant story of Inuit hockey players Terence and Jordin Tootoo. In 2006, he wrote and story-edited “Exhibit Eh!: Exposing Canada,” a ten-part, off-beat documentary series about two strange men in search of Canada’s true past, for CTV’s “Travel and Escape Network.”
In 1999, Shane wrote his first book for kids, a young-adult novel called “The Mystery of Ireland’s Eye.” It was based on an ocean-kayaking trip he took to a ghost-town island off the coast of Newfoundland. The story tells of 12-year-old Dylan Maples, who learns some colourful Canadian history during the course of a dramatic adventure. Critical acclaim for the book convinced Peacock to create a series — The Dylan Maples Adventures. Each of the four books takes Dylan to a different Canadian province, where he gets involved in mysteries or strange events in spooky places with intriguing histories.
In 2002, Penguin Books released Shane’s book for young adults, about Canada’s Prime Ministers and Fathers of Confederation. It was called “Unusual Heroes” and presented Canada’s leaders, past and present, in a dramatic, entertaining way.
In the fall of 2007 Tundra Books published Peacock's YA novel “Eye of the Crow.” Subtitled “The Boy Sherlock Holmes: His First Case,” it is the world’s first account of the childhood exploits of the most famous detective of all time. It tells the tale of a gruesome murder committed in the spooky, dimly gas-lit East End of London, observed by no one except two crows. From this scrap of evidence, the brilliant boy solves the crime. Dark events surrounding the investigation push him into a life of combating evil. “Death in the Air,” the second book in The Boy Sherlock Holmes series, about a man who falls to his apparent death from a flying trapeze at the Crystal Palace in London (and lands at Sherlock’s feet), followed in the spring of 2008. "Vanishing Girl", the 3rd case, appeared in 2009, exploring the burgeoning young detective’s involvement in the twisting tale of the mysterious kidnapping of a prominent Conservative politician’s daughter. "The Secret Fiend" was published in 2010, a Robert Louis Stevenson influenced novel in which The Boy Sherlock attempts to capture the terrifying Spring Heeled Jack, once thought to be strictly fictional. There will be two more novels in the series.
The series is being published simultaneously in Canada and the U.S. (and is appearing in other countries and languages, including China, France, Indonesia, and Spain.) Every installment has won Junior Library Guild of America Premier Selection Awards. "Eye of the Crow" has gained many other awards, including the Violet Downey Award for Best Children’s Book in Canada, the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Juvenile Crime Fiction in Canada, a spot on the American Library Association’s Top Ten Youth Mysteries list, the Canadian Library Association’s Honour Book for both Children’s and Young Adult Literature, and the Moonbeam Gold Medal in the U.S. "Death in the Air" garnered many awards too and "Vanishing Girl" won three national awards in Canada in one week in May 2010.
Shane has been a guest at many events across Canada and the United States, such as Blue Metropolis: The Montreal International Writers Festival, Wordfest: The Banff / Calgary International Authors’ Festival, The International Reading Association conference in Atlanta, The Vancouver Island Children’s Book Festival, The Canadian Book Camp, Book Expo America, and The Canadian Children’s Book Week tour; and has made radio and TV appearances on CBC, CTV, and other networks in both countries as well. He frequently appears at conventions and in schools from coast to coast.
