Lee Smith Mystery

Somebody tried to kill me. Travel writer Lee Smith experiences a bumpy landing when she returns to Canada from a Caribbean cruise. A text from her best friend, billionaire Jack Hughes, appears on her phone before her plane has even reached the gate in Toronto-Somebody tried to kill me. Even worse, it happened at Berkshire, the prestigious school where they first met. Twenty years earlier, Berkshire's iron gates and thick walls may have kept Lee safe from the media frenzy resulting from her father's sensational trial, but they also locked her into her own kind of prison. Despite the elaborate story she made up to hide her identity, her classmates found out who she really was and bullied her mercilessly. The emotional scars left behind still haven't healed. Berkshire's walls haven't kept a current student safe, either. A seventeen year old girl has tumbled out of the Berkshire tower to her death-did she jump? Was she pushed? Lee would rather travel to any other place on the planet than return to Berkshire but Jack needs her help. And maybe the time has come to finally face her old demons. Braving Berkshire, Lee finds sex tapes, a blackmail scheme, and a murderer who's only just getting started-and it looks like Lee could be next on the list.

Travel writer Lee Smith is halfway through her 7,000-kilometer cross-Canada road trip, enjoying the view from the top of The Sleeping Giant in Lake Superior, when she agrees to take a 500-kilometer detour north. Despite its isolation, the fly-in Ojibway community of Webequie First Nation is having problems with the neighbors. Multiple mining companies are clamoring to tap into the $60-billion mineral field that envelopes Webequie. Even Lee's significant other, Jack Hughes, is blasting gaping wounds in Mother Earth to increase the shine of the bottom line at Hughes Diamonds. A prospector has been, shot, and his face has been, carved. An elder is arrested by the Ontario Provincial Police, but the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service officers in Webequie don't think he did it. Visiting Texan hunters are shooting anything that moves. A little boy carefully hides the big shiny rock crystal that he found in the river. A little girl thinks she's seen a ghost. An accredited Sasquatch researcher is thrashing around in the bush. While trying to find a killer, who isn't done yet, Lee stumbles on the rough edges in her relationship with Jack, gets almost as high as the dancing green shapes of the Wawatay in the night sky, crosses paths with a porcupine, and circumnavigates wolverine traps on the run of her life. The killer is hunting her. If she takes a wrong turn, she'll be heading down a path with No Return.

Two countries. Three police forces. Four bodies. Travel writer Lee Smith joins her brand new husband Jack Hughes and some of his top executives for what Jack claims will be a fun corporate team building adventure; chasing geocaching clues that take them from the Bay of Fundy, to the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon, and across Newfoundland. Lee hopes the trip will offer her an escape from the intense media interest in her father's appeal of his six murder convictions. Instead of fun and escape, Lee finds dead bodies. Bodies with first names that match her father's list of victims. Soon more than the media is focused on Lee. The combined forces of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the French Gendarmerie Nationale, and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary are keeping a close eye on everyone on the Hughes retreat, especially Lee. A menacing muscle-bound man keeps showing up wherever Lee is. A red car repeatedly appears in her rear-view mirror. And, all the while, the body count continues to climb.