A SORROWFUL SANCTUARY

The course of true love never runs smooth for a police inspector and an independent woman.

Inspector Darling has gotten off to a rough start with Lane Winslow, whose private income has allowed her to leave England, where she was a spy during World War II, and live a peaceful, lazy life in British Columbia. Her astuteness has helped Darling solve several murders and rescued him when he’s been a suspect himself (It Begins in Betrayal, 2018, etc.). While Darling takes a call from frantic Vanessa Castle, whose grown son is missing, Lane and her friends, fishing on a nearby lake, tow in a boat whose contents include a revolver and a man near death. They think the unknown man is Carl Castle until Vanessa says it’s not her son. A little digging reveals that Carl, who’d just lost his job, may have been involved in a neo-Nazi group that’s shockingly sprung up from a similar prewar organization. In addition, the area is plagued by a rash of burglaries. Lane and Darling’s romance has progressed apace, but his desire to marry unsettles Lane, whose last affair ended badly. While Darling and Constable Ames pursue their investigation, the ever curious Lane tries to befriend Mrs. Castle and borrows a neighbor’s boat so she and her friend Angela can explore the lake and determine where the gravely injured man came from. They find a tiny cabin where one K. Lasek has been living. His books indicate that he was a German speaker but no Nazi, and this discovery helps break open a case that may be related to Darling’s other investigations without, at first, resolving the complications in their rocky romance.

An excellent mystery complemented by an appealingly down-to-earth look at life in postwar Western Canada.