A Sorrowful Sanctuary: A Lane Winslow Mystery

Whishaw’s intricately plotted fifth Lane Winslow mystery (after It Begins in Betrayal) opens with a bang. On the night of July 18, 1947, an unidentified man in a rowboat on a lake in Nelson, British Columbia, is wounded by a gunshot. The next day, Lane Winslow, who has a habit of finding bodies, is fishing with friends when they spot a drifting boat. Inside is a barely alive man who whispers, “Let me die.” They bring the man to shore, and Lane phones Inspector Darling, “the man she loved,” and asks him to send an ambulance to the wharf. That same day, a distraught mother calls the police to report that her 20-year-old son has failed to come home. The two cases overlap as Darling and his colleague Constable Ames try to determine the wounded man’s identity and find the missing son. A large cast and multiple flashbacks to different time periods can make the action hard to follow at times, but in the end Whishaw brings all the narrative threads together for a satisfying finale. Progress in the often fraught personal relationship between Lane and Darling will please series fans. (Sept.)