Crime writer from St. Albert publishes exciting thriller

Nobody likes to be fooled – unless they are puzzling over a crime novel. It becomes an intellectual challenge, a step-by-step guessing game leading up to the big reveal at the end.

Laurie McLure of St. Albert is the latest crime writer to publish her first suspense thriller. Shadows of the mountains. It is the first of a three-part series that begins when Nicola Henderson, a victim support advocate, discovers she has a stalker.

She and her family take refuge in a remote lodge deep in the Rocky Mountains. But not everything is as it seems in this picturesque area. The Mountain Shadows Lodge has only a few guests, but the first night features a campfire, a ghost story, a prank that goes wrong, and too much alcohol. The next day, one of the guests is missing and Nicola learns that a name has been erased from the lodge's official records.

McLure was tight-lipped about the plot, but mentioned that one of the main themes is, “Who helps the helper when the helper needs help? I needed someone like a doctor, a nurse or a police officer who lives in a small town and gets involved in everyone's business,” she said.

McLure, who subscribes to Crime Writers of Canada and Mystery Writers of America magazines, first began thinking about writing a thriller while working for Alberta's Ministry of Community Development.

After leaving government service, she traveled the world, and when tourism ground to a halt during the COVID pandemic, she pulled out ideas that had been floating around in her head for decades.

“I loved reading crime novels and was inspired by a variety of books from Nancy Drew from Louise Penney to Ruth Ware. I even met Ruth Ware at a conference in Iceland. After her talk, we sat on the steps of the church in Reykjavik. She sees herself as a teammate. There is no competition. She was willing to help me out.”

Using seven drafts, McLure has created a scary, action-packed page-turner that focuses on the good versus evil format and whose message is simple.

“What you do will always come back to haunt you. Who we care about and how we treat people in the present and in the past will always come back to haunt us. You can run away, but you can't hide.”

McLure reads Mountain Shadow at Bailey Books on Saturday 24 August from 1pm to 3pm. Bailey Books is located at 29B Rowland Crescent.