Defence Wounds
Book 2 of the Lila Birch Murder Mystery Series
Lila Birch is taking a well-deserved break from her academic toils at Brent University in the picturesque Ontario lakes region town of Collinghurst. The location of her combined work and play getaway is an even smaller community of Circle Lake where her parents moved to enjoy their retirement. Lila is plenty busy putting final touches to her PhD Thesis in anthropology and working toward her oral defence and spending time with her parents. Her thoughts keep wandering in the direction of her dashing police detective beau, Curtis Louw. There is a whole new community of people to get to know and Lila is eager to make time for fishing and picnics with her parents. But life is going to get messy again. There is a new and charming young man on the local scene to whom Lila feels instantly drawn. In her social encounters, she starts to pick up strange interpersonal vibes from the seemingly laid-back locals. Matters seem to get ever more peculiar as she watches preparations for a Canada Day celebration by the people attached to the local fishing and hunting club. She witnesses odd events, tensions, and snippets of conversations which are a preamble to a grisly murder during the party at the club. A member of the club is found with a knife protruding from his midriff. Soon enough, Curtis the dashing detective beau and his colleague Asha Wali are on the scene. As evidence mounts to implicate one of the local residents whom Lila can’t imagine as the culprit, she can’t help but get involved in an investigation that she is warned away from. In the throes of her thesis defence, her increasingly complicated love life, and dealing with her concerned parents, Lila is starting to see disturbing patterns in the seemingly tightly knit community. They lead her toward finding the solution – or rather the solution finding her – just before more tragedy is about to befall the small hamlet of Circle Lake.
Publisher: Self-published
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781069977830
Location: Circle Lake, Ontario (Fictional)
Sub-genres: Small Town , Romance , Nordic , Cottage , Academia
