Lightning Strikes the Silence: A Lane Winslow Mystery
"The best Iona Whishaw novel yet." —Castlegar News

Beginning with a bang, the latest mystery in the series Publishers Weekly calls “highly entertaining” is a study in bygone promises and lingering prejudice.

A warm June afternoon in King’s Cove is interrupted by an explosion. Following the sound, Lane goes to investigate. Up a steep path she discovers a secluded cabin and, hiding nearby, a young Japanese girl injured and mute, but very much alive.

At the Nelson Police Station, Inspector Darling and Sergeant Ames, following up on a report of a nighttime heist at the local jeweller’s, discover the jeweller himself dead in his office, apparently bludgeoned, and a live wire hanging off the back of the building.

As Lane attempts to speed the search for the girl’s family with her own lines of inquiry, Darling and his team dig deeper into a local connection between the jeweller and a fellow businessman that leads across the pond to Cornwall and north to a mining interest on the McKenzie River.

Offices are being ransacked and someone is following Lane. Through the alleyways of Nelson onto the country roads and woods trails of King’s Cove, the latest Winslow mystery is a study in bygone promises and lingering prejudice

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Lightning Strikes the Silence: A Lane Winslow Mystery
"The best Iona Whishaw novel yet." —Castlegar News

Beginning with a bang, the latest mystery in the series Publishers Weekly calls “highly entertaining” is a study in bygone promises and lingering prejudice.

A warm June afternoon in King’s Cove is interrupted by an explosion. Following the sound, Lane goes to investigate. Up a steep path she discovers a secluded cabin and, hiding nearby, a young Japanese girl injured and mute, but very much alive.

At the Nelson Police Station, Inspector Darling and Sergeant Ames, following up on a report of a nighttime heist at the local jeweller’s, discover the jeweller himself dead in his office, apparently bludgeoned, and a live wire hanging off the back of the building.

As Lane attempts to speed the search for the girl’s family with her own lines of inquiry, Darling and his team dig deeper into a local connection between the jeweller and a fellow businessman that leads across the pond to Cornwall and north to a mining interest on the McKenzie River.

Offices are being ransacked and someone is following Lane. Through the alleyways of Nelson onto the country roads and woods trails of King’s Cove, the latest Winslow mystery is a study in bygone promises and lingering prejudice

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Lightning Strikes the Silence: A Lane Winslow Mystery

Lightning Strikes the Silence: A Lane Winslow Mystery

by Iona Whishaw
Lightning Strikes the Silence: A Lane Winslow Mystery
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Lightning Strikes the Silence: A Lane Winslow Mystery

Lightning Strikes the Silence: A Lane Winslow Mystery

by Iona Whishaw

Overview

"The best Iona Whishaw novel yet." —Castlegar News

Beginning with a bang, the latest mystery in the series Publishers Weekly calls “highly entertaining” is a study in bygone promises and lingering prejudice.

A warm June afternoon in King’s Cove is interrupted by an explosion. Following the sound, Lane goes to investigate. Up a steep path she discovers a secluded cabin and, hiding nearby, a young Japanese girl injured and mute, but very much alive.

At the Nelson Police Station, Inspector Darling and Sergeant Ames, following up on a report of a nighttime heist at the local jeweller’s, discover the jeweller himself dead in his office, apparently bludgeoned, and a live wire hanging off the back of the building.

As Lane attempts to speed the search for the girl’s family with her own lines of inquiry, Darling and his team dig deeper into a local connection between the jeweller and a fellow businessman that leads across the pond to Cornwall and north to a mining interest on the McKenzie River.

Offices are being ransacked and someone is following Lane. Through the alleyways of Nelson onto the country roads and woods trails of King’s Cove, the latest Winslow mystery is a study in bygone promises and lingering prejudice

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781771514323
Publisher: Heritage Group Distribution
Publication date: 05/07/2024
Series: Lane Winslow Series , #11
Pages: 500
Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Iona Whishaw is a former educator and social worker whose mother and grandfather were both spies during their respective wars. She is the award-winning author of the Globe and Mail bestselling Lane Winslow Mystery series. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband.

Read an Excerpt

PROLOGUE
May 1905

“Look what you’ve done, you town-bred pig!”

He barely had time to form an answer when he was pushed hard.  In a fury he scrambled up off the ground and lunged at his attacker’s feet knocking him over so that his head fell hard on the rocks.

“Say that again!”  But the boy didn’t move.

“Say it again!” he yelled,  He swiping at the boy to make him move, and then struck him hard.  “Say it!” he was screaming now, reaching back again with his fist. 

He didn’t hear anything until he felt himself being lifted off the ground, someone far outside the deafening thrumming inside his own head roaring, “Stop!  For God’s sake, stop!”

  

CHAPTER ONE
June 11, 1948

The explosion was deep and resonant, and so unfamiliar that the residents of King’s Cove who were outside, which was most of them on a beautiful June day, looked upward thinking it was odd to have thunder out of so clear a blue sky.

Lane Winslow, reading under the weeping willow, frowned, closed her book, and struggled up from her folding canvas chair. Where had the boom come from? Having dismissed the idea that it was thunder, she turned her mind to her neighbours. Had an explosion accidentally ignited in someone’s coal cellar? It seemed to be coming from up the mountain a little south of her. The Hughes family lived up there!

She dropped her book and ran into the house to seize the car keys off the hook by the inside of the door, jumped into her little Austin, backed it hurriedly onto the road, and then swung it around and made for the fork that led on up the hill toward the Hughes house. She turned left and bumped as quickly as she could down the rutted road that ran alongside their fenced field, her tires sinking into the muddy pools still left from the torrential rain of the night before. She saw their two milking cows cowering under a tree, and she tried to go faster, conscious of the deep ruts causing the centre hump to scrape the bottom of her car. In the driveway, she stopped and gazed around her.

Not a bloom out of place. The magnificent flower borders maintained by the grande dame of the family, old Gladys Hughes, flowed around the fruit trees, and the curved patches of lawn were the luminous green of early summer. Drops of moisture on the plants dazzled in the mid-morning sun. No smoke, no fire. Just a gentle mist as the sun evaporated the remains of the night’s rain. But the two spaniels were definitely kicking up a fuss. She saw what she had missed initially. At the edge of the apple orchard, all three Hughes women were standing with their hands shielding their eyes looking west up the mountain. Then Mabel, the elder of the two “girls,” both in their fifties, leaned over and tried to hush the hysterically barking dogs.

Lane got out of the car and hurried along the final bit of grassy drive to where they were standing.

“You heard it too,” Gwen, the younger daughter said, turning to greet Lane. “The dogs have gone mad.”

“I thought it came from here,” Lane said. She too gazed in the direction of the hill above the orchard where they had been looking.

 “Good of you to come,” Gladys said, glancing at her. “All tip-top here. It came from up there somewhere.” She pointed where the thickly treed mountainside climbed steeply above King’s Cove. “I thought it might be those Sons of whatever they are, those Freedomites blowing things up again, but there’s nothing up there to blow up. It’s just bush. Do you think some hound is blasting up there looking for silver? That would be the bloody limit!”

“Language, mother,” Mabel said, then pointed up the hill, “Is that smoke?”

The dogs took up their chorus again. “It is, I think,” Lane confirmed. “I wonder if anyone is up there and been hurt?”

“If it sets the forest alight, we’re all for it,” Gladys said grimly. King’s Cove had lived through the fire of 1919, which had destroyed several houses and most of the orchards in the north part of the settlement. “We’d best telephone the authorities.” She started back to the house.

“How far up do you think that is?” asked Lane.

Gwen considered. “It’s hard to tell from here. We sometimes hike up that way with the dogs and it’s a good forty minutes where we go, but that smoke is much farther still. There’s a rocky outcrop with a marvellous view of this arm of the lake and the mountains. There’s not really a proper trail there, though.”

“Higher up than forty minutes?” Lane was becoming more uneasy. The smoke was rising blackly above the thick blanket of trees and was rolling over on itself. “I think I’d better go up and make sure there’s nobody there.”

“Mother can do the phoning. We’ll come with you. Let me run and get my first aid kit,” Mabel said. “I know the way. I still keep the kit in good nick since the war, though it won’t do much if someone is badly burned.”

Lane waited impatiently, keeping an eye on whether the smoke patch was getting larger. Finally, Gwen and Mabel came, Gwen carrying a thermos and Mabel a shoulder bag.

“The damn water is patchy again. All I got was a blast of air when I turned on the tap. That’s why it took so long. It’s been a bit dodgy for ages, but it’s just got really bad. I’ve got to get Harris to go check the lines. There must be a hole or air pockets in the pipe somewhere. Right, off we go.”

With that Mabel strode off, leading the way, the dogs bounding around her, excited about the adventure.

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