The windmills on Wolfe Island left an impression on mystery novelist Tessa Wegert following a visit about five years ago, causing her mind to spin with plot possibilities.
“I was there for the day, and drove around,” Ms. Wegert said. “I was there just to take the ferry somewhere else, but I spent the day there. Even five years later, I remember being struck by the wind turbines and wind farm that’s there.”
The day was overcast and threatening on her stay on Wolfe Island, located in Ontario, Canada, at the entrance of the St. Lawrence River across from Cape Vincent. Ms. Wegert took photos and a video.
“These turbines just loomed over the very green corn fields,” Ms. Wegert said in a phone interview from her coastal Connecticut home. “I couldn’t get over the sense that it was something eerie going on here. It kind of sent chills up my spine.”
When Ms. Wegert sat down to write the third installment of her Shana Merchant mystery novels, she recalled the photos and videos she took on the island and used them to refresh her memory.
“I remembered that I had this thought that it would make an eerie kind of crime scene,” she said. “Wolfe Island is so flat and the turbines are almost alien-looking. It seemed the perfect place to set a crime. That’s how “Dead Wind’ got started.”
Ms. Wegert grew up in Quebec and first visited the Thousand Islands about two decades ago after she met her future husband. She’s been returning to the area every summer since then, and particularly to a small island near Alexandria Bay, in the channel, owned by her parents-in-law.
“Dead Wind,” now available as an e-book, will be released in hardcover on April 5 by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books. The story follows the life and times of senior police investigator Shana Merchant who relocated to the Thousand Islands. The first book in the series, “Death in the Family,” was released in 2020. It was followed last year by “The Dead Season.”
In “Dead Wind,” protagonist Shana Merchant now calls the Thousand Islands area home, but she is still pursued by a serial killer who held her captive in New York City, from where she moved from. Her emotional trauma from that episode as a NYPD detective also continues to haunt her in her new line of police work.
Wolfe Island and its windmills provide one setting for the “Dead Wind,” when a body is discovered underneath a wind turbine. Shana Merchant and partner Tim Wellington ponder if the body is a victim of Ms. Merchant’s deadly stalker.
“Because I’m Canadian, I thought this was the perfect time for me to work in a Canadian character and have Shana collaborate with Ontario Provincial Police, which I hadn’t had a chance yet to do in the series,” Ms. Wegert said. “It all kind of came together from there.”
Ms. Wegert also churns up a political scandal based in Watertown, family secrets and old grudges along the river communities in her fictional “Dead Wind” plot lines, highlighting what the publisher calls a “small-town vibe.”
“Small towns have always been a big part of my life,” said Ms. Wegert, who lives in a small town in Connecticut. “And I’ve spent so much time in Alexandria Bay, Clayton and other small towns in the Thousand Islands. But looking back to even when I was growing up in Quebec, I can remember specifically when I got old enough, when my parents weren’t concealing everything from me.”
These revelations shared by her parents were eye-opening to Ms. Wegert.
“There are a lot of things that happen in small towns that I think get swept under the rug — affairs, scandals and various things that I didn’t even know existed,” Ms. Wegert said. “And I remember so clearly the moment where I started to find out that this was what was going on right under my nose with my neighbors and friends and I was completely oblivious to all of it. The idea of small-town secrets and not knowing what’s really happening behind closed doors with your neighbors and past histories between people and not necessarily having all the information about relationships that existed at one time or another — all of that has always been really interesting to me.”
For “Dead Wind,” with the Alexandria Bay area Shana Merchant’s home base, it made sense for Ms. Wegert to dig up some fictional small-town secrets and grudges.
“In kind of the same way I try to have the mystery unravel over time, she’s getting to know the community and the people in it at the same time that the reader is, and she’s discovering that not everything is what it may seem on the surface,” Ms. Wegert said.
“Dead Wind” also takes note of quirky landmarks in the Thousand Islands area, from the “Heart of the Thousand Islands” sign at the entrance to the village of Alexandria Bay, to a sculpture by local artist William Salisbury.
“What’s cool about the Thousand Islands is that there are so many unique and quirky characteristics that I’ve gotten to know from all my years of visiting,” Ms. Wegert said. “It’s almost like a second home to me. Every time I go, I pay attention to all of those landmarks and historical features to look for opportunities to work them into a future book because there’s a lot of material there. A lot of potential.”
Some of those features will wind up in the fourth installment of the Shana Merchant series, scheduled for release sometime next year.
“The difficult part in writing a series like this is that I don’t know at any point how many books there will be, or if my publisher will say, ‘Let’s publish more books,’” Ms. Wegert said. “I’ve had to kind of fly by the seat of my pants in a way in writing the series and I don’t necessarily know when I finish one book what the next book would like, if there was a next book.”
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The details
WHAT: “Dead Wind,” book three in the Shana Merchant mystery series by Tessa Wegert.
PUBLISHER: Severn House, 230 pages.
AVAILABLE : Now as an e-book, with the hard cover release on Tuesday, April 5.
A CRITIC’S VIEWPOINT: “Wegert melds the police investigation so deftly with Shana’s endless family drama.” — Kirkus Reviews
WHERE AVAILABLE: Beginning April, 5, at online book stores and at The Little Book Store in Clayton and Watertown.
OF NOTE: Ms. Wegert plans to host a book signing this summer in the Thousand Islands area. “I often do something with The Little Book Shop,” she said. “That’s a great place to get the book. They always have signed copies.”
