Review: Lighting Strikes the Silence

Gather around, my friends. It's the time of year when I write, in length, about how amazing the Lane Winslow mystery series is. Iona Whishaw has created a heroine and a series I absolutely cannot get enough of. Lightning Strikes the Silence is the latest installment (the eleventh!) and it was everything I needed it to be!

Here’s the book’s description:

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.

I love Whishaw’s novels for a number of reasons so I’ll go through them all and how I felt about them while reading this latest book. The first is the mystery element. I’m almost always surprised with how things turn out but not in a jaw-dropping, I-never-saw-this-coming kind of way. Part of the surprise, for me, could be because there are usually two cases happening simultaneously, sometimes connected, sometimes not. There’s always something Lane finds herself caught up in (much to Darling’s dismay!) as well as a case the police in Nelson are working on solving. I find the two mysteries allow me to just go along for the ride, trusting that all will be revealed at the right moment. In this book, I had a feeling I knew who the murderer was a little earlier than usual but the reasoning and how it all unfolded was still enough of a surprise to satisfy me.

Speaking of the mystery, I was lucky enough to see Whishaw at an event the week before publication day. She was interesting, delightful, and so much fun. I’m really glad I made the trek to the event! Given the multiple mysteries in her books, I was surprised to learn that Whishaw is an absolute pantser. She doesn’t plot out her stories and sometimes doesn’t even know who the murderer may be. She also said (and I love this) that when a dead body comes along as she’s writing, she has a personal rule that the body must stay and she just has to figure out what to do about it. Fascinating!

I also adore the historical aspect of these novels. I’m always learning a little nugget (or two…or three…) when I read Whishaw’s books, which I love. Recorded Canadian history may be a little more recent than history from other countries, but it is vast and so much is unknown or not talked about nearly enough. In this novel, Whishaw shines a light on the expulsion and internment of Japanese folks during World War II. This was yet another moment in history when white settlers thought they knew best and banished a group from a particular area. And for those who say that at least Canada wasn’t as bad as the US? Not in this case. It took far longer for Japanese individuals to be allowed to move back to the coastal areas of British Columbia than it did their counterparts in the United States. It took until 1949 until those of Japanese descent (even those born in Canada) were allowed to move freely throughout the country.

Finally, I love the characters Whishaw has created. Lane is based on her mother (she said during the event that people always ask why she “had” to make Lane so beautiful. She says it’s because Lane is based on her mom and her mom was beautiful, therefore Lane must be beautiful, too!) but even with Whishaw’s mom as the inspiration, Lane is very much her own woman and I love her so very much. There are many, many characters in King’s Cove (based on the real town of Queen’s Bay, as I learned) and Nelson but every single one of them has a purpose and a history. The novels just wouldn’t be the same without the extremely strong cast of secondary characters. I particularly liked getting to see another side of one King’s Cove character in this story!

Lighting Strikes the Silence was an absolute joy to read. Iona Whishaw has written another winner in her Lane Winslow mystery series and I cannot wait for everyone to read it. And if you haven’t started the series yet, well, what are you waiting for? Get reading!

*An egalley was provided by the publisher, Touchwood Editions, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*

Review: Framed in Fire

I was a latecomer to the Lane Winslow series having only started reading Iona Whishaw’s mysteries last year. It started with A Killer in King’s Cove, published in 2015, and Framed in Fire, the ninth book in the bestselling series, is about to be published. I absolutely devoured it over the Easter long weekend – both wanting to finish the story so I would know how it ended and wanting to savour every last page of this great installment.

Here’s the book’s description:

It’s early spring 1948 and Lane arrives in New Denver to find that her friend, Peter Barisoff, is not at home. Instead, in a nearby meadow, she encounters Tom, an Indigenous man in search of his ancestral lands. Lane is intrigued. Unfortunately, once Peter returns home, the day takes a gloomy turn when the trio uncovers human remains next to Peter’s garden, and Lane must tell her husband, Inspector Darling, that she’s inadvertently stumbled into his professional domain—again.
Back in Nelson, the Vitalis, Lane and Darling’s favourite restaurateurs, are victims of arson. Constable Terrell’s investigation suggests prejudice as a motive, and the case quickly escalates, as the Vitalis receive increasingly threatening notes of warning. Meanwhile, Sergeant Ames works a robbery while alienating Tina Van Eyck in his personal time, and a swirling rumour sets the entire station on edge and prompts an RCMP investigation into Darling’s integrity.
Amid the local bustle series readers have come to love, Framed in Fire is bound up in difficult questions of community and belonging, and the knowledge that trusted neighbours can sometimes be as sinister as a stranger in the dark.

There are a lot of things I love about this series. One of them is the historical facts Whishaw weaves into her mysteries. We had already met Barisoff and learned of the struggles his people, the Doukhobors, had endured when they fled Russia for Canada. In this book, Whishaw honours the First Nations people who would have lived in the area where Lane and her friends now reside. The Sinixt lived in what is now the West Kootenay region and, though there are still a few who reside in Canada (most are in Washington state), the Canadian government declared the Sinixt extinct in 1956 (not long after Lane’s story took place). Whishaw treated the Sinixt story with, what I believe is, respect and explains in her acknowledgements who she spoke to and the information she relied on from her sources to make sure she was respectful. She noted that she had had no idea about the Indigenous people who would have lived in her area and I’m glad she learned about them and could weave their story into Lane’s.

Another thing I love about these books is Lane herself. She is, as one of the characters in this book says, a warrior. She’s absolutely magnificent and I don’t blame her husband’s Sergeant, the affable Ames, for being so (platonically) infatuated with her. I am too! Given I love me some World War II historical fiction stories, I’d love to know exactly what Lane got up to during the war but then this series wouldn’t be what it is – a story of a woman who went through hell during a war and is trying (and succeeding) to rebuild her life in the peace and quiet of another country. Well, it would be peaceful if she didn’t go around finding dead bodies all the time! She’s incredibly intelligent (she’d have to be, given what she had to do during the war) and I love that the men in this series (including the aforementioned Ames as well as her husband, Inspector Darling) have nothing but the utmost respect for her. They don’t find her a nuisance when she has a thought about a case and they only get growly because they want her to be safe. What I wouldn’t give to pull up a chair on Lane’s back porch and settle in with a restorative drink to hear some of her stories.

Now, the actual mystery in this mystery novel involved, as per usual, a few different cases. I wasn’t sure if they would end up being related or not and I loved reading along and trying to connect the dots alongside Lane and Darling. I can’t say I saw the ending coming, which is always a delight when reading a mystery novel. Sure, I like feeling like I’m smart and could figure out the end but I kind of like having no idea right up until the final reveal.

I cannot recommend the Lane Winslow mystery series enough. Iona Whishaw is an immensely talented writer and she has created a heroine and a series that is so incredibly delightful to read. Framed in Fire was so, so very good and I highly encourage everyone to read it – and the rest of the books in the series!

*An ARC of this novel was provided by the publisher, TouchWood Editions, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*