A little girl out to play wanders away from her home and into the back of a truck driven by a man on the run from a murder charge – the murder of a man with a lot of connections, connections that would make anyone want to run. Sgt. Winston Windflower, Cree Mountie in Grandbank, Newfoundland, catches the lost girl call when it comes into the station, not knowing the outcome will have life-changing implications for everyone involved.
This series has much to recommend it. The plots are always topical, and intriguing, the stories well-told, the characters fully-developed, the dialogue smooth, and the scenes so well-described, I can hear the slap of the water against the pier, or smell Windflower’s Tim Horton go cup of coffee.
It’s the relationships between the characters that keep me coming back. In this book, Winston’s wife Sheila Hillier (and Grandbank Mayor) is pregnant. His care and concern for their child-to-be is reflected in his care and concern for the missing little girl. And the impending birth forces him to make some interesting choices in his own life.
All my favorite characters from previous books are back, and each one gets screen time – I feel like I’m getting to hang out with old friends who have much more interesting jobs than I do. The ending of this one is particularly satisfying – a longtime thorn in Windflower’s side gets a comeuppance that is worth the wait. Not to give anything away, but all of the loose ends are nicely wrapped up by the end, and the author introduces a new wrinkle into the Windflower/Hillier household – the running of a B&B - that leaves some interesting options for the future of the series.
I was privileged to be a beta reader on this book for author Mike Martin. But this is a series I would look for anyway – great sense of place, characters to care about and root for, current plots, good dialogue, I could go on and on. (Windflower started my love of all things Canadian.) I could see this as a BBC or Netflix series. I hope Sgt. Windflower has a long and happy career.