Lightning Strikes the Silence

by Iona Whishaw

It’s 1948. Lane Winslow — along with three of her neighbours — hears an explosion and sees smoke in the mountain above their tiny rural community of Kings Cove, British Columbia. They hike up the mountain and discover a five-foot crater and an injured, unconscious little girl, who appears to be Chinese or Japanese. She has a broken leg and has suffered burns and injuries that look like they’ve been caused by shrapnel. Lane and her friends carry the girl down the hill and get her to hospital. Later, Lane investigates the area again and discovers the dead body of a woman on the other side of the crater; she concludes it’s the girl’s mother.

Meanwhile, Lane’s husband, Inspector Frederick Darling, who heads the police force in the larger nearby town of Nelson, investigates a break-in at a jewellery store. The store has been ransacked, and Darling discovers the store’s owner lying dead with his head bashed in. The owner’s wife has no idea why he was at the store: she thought he was in Vancouver on business.

The two deaths, and the mystery of the little girl’s identity, appear to be unrelated. The RCMP insist on taking over the investigation of the explosion, and pay no attention to Lane’s observations, even though Lane has explosives expertise derived from her secret wartime exploits in Europe. Wanting answers for the little girl and her mother, Lane pursues a private investigation on her own, and ends up discovering information impinging on her husband’s police work as well.

As always with Whishaw’s novels, this one features Impeccably researched history, engaging writing, and tense and compelling suspense along with more than one intriguing mystery. Aspects of contemporary events play a role, including the internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII, as well as the presence of pacifist Doukhobor settlers from Russia and their radical offshoot, the Sons of Freedom.

In flashbacks we learn about the secret romance of the little girl’s parents, who confronted racist opposition to mixed-race marriages. Events that happened in Cornwall both before and after World War I are also important for the plot. Tensions ratchet up, leading to an exciting crisis and a satisfying conclusion.

This is the 11th in Whishaw’s Lane Winslow series. The books share some features of “cozy” genre mysteries — a close-knit community, domestic topics — but they also include at times a near-noir grittiness. The dangers are real, with believably malevolent villains who reveal authentic societal dark sides. This novel, like others in the series, is enjoyable and entertaining, but it also leaves you with food for thought

Iona Whishaw was born in Kimberly, B.C. in 1948, to British parents who immigrated to Canada after WWII. Her maternal grandfather was a British spy in both world wars, and her mother, who spoke seven languages, was also involved in espionage during the war. Whishaw’s father was a geologist; his work, and her mother’s adventuresome nature, led the family to relocate several times to places in Mexico and Central America as well as the US. 

 Whishaw attended Antioch College in Ohio, graduating with a degree in history and education.  She became a teacher, ultimately becoming a school principal in Vancouver.  In 2010 the YWCA named her a Woman of Distinction in Education, and in 2012 she won an award as one of Canada's Outstanding Principals. 

 In her forties, while still teaching, she completed a Master’s degree in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She subsequently published some short fiction and poetry, as well as a children’s book.  A meeting with mystery writer P.D. James in Vancouver inspired her to follow her dream of writing a mystery novel. “Almost from that moment, I thought dammit, I can do this.”

 She was still working when she began writing her first novel, rising at 5:30 a.m. each day and writing 400 words while her brain was “fresh.” In 2014 she retired from teaching and completed that novel, originally self-publishing it in 2015 under the title Dead in the Water. It was later renamed A Killer in King’s Cove when publisher Touchwood Editions picked up the series.  Whishaw patterned the character of Lane Winslow on her mother, and based the fictional King’s Cove setting on a tiny BC community where she lived as a child.

 Whishaw has been prolific since then. Lightning Strikes the Silence, the eleventh novel in the Lane Winslow series, was published in May 2024. She and her husband, artist Terry Miller, live in Vancouver. They have one son and two grandsons.

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