About this item
On a snowy day in December 1946, Lane Winslow - a former British intelligence agent who's escaped to the rural Canadian community of King's Cove in pursuit of a tranquil life - is introduced to the local hot springs. While there, she is astonished to overhear nearby patrons speaking Russian. When one of the speakers is found dead in the change room, Lane's linguistic and intelligence experience is of immeasurable value to the local police force in solving the murder.The investigation points to the Soviet Union, where Stalin's purges are eliminating enemies, and the reach of Stalin's agent snakes all the way into a harmless Doukhobor community. Her complicated relationship with the local police inspector, Darling, is intensified by the perils of the case - and by the discovery of her own father's death during the war.
About the Author
Iona Whishaw was born in 1948 to English parents in British Columbia and brought up in Mexico and the US. She worked as a youth worker, taught high school and served for 16 years as a high school administrator in Vancouver, Canada. She earned a Masters of Arts degree in creative writing from UBC and was the recipient of the YWCA Women of Distinction in Education award and a Canada's Top Principals award. Her first work was a children's book, Henry and the Cow Problem, and because she has loved mysteries since her early love affair with Nancy Drew, she has recently embarked on a well-reviewed period mystery series beginning with A Killer In King's Cove and Death In The Darkening Mist. The books are set in 1946 in a charming backwater community in BC that the author lived in as a child. It is a community that cannot, alas, escape the press of the wider darker forces of the world and the effects of the war they have just come through. Her main character is based to no small extent on her own mother who engaged in espionage during WW2, and provided a life of travel and high adventure for her daughter.
