The Gaslight Alibi

Bainbridge Island, 1889. Sawmill owner Hadley Vance is found hanged in a bolted room with the window painted shut. Seattle detective Verity Locke is telegraphed for, and finds a ledger full of payments to a lighthouse keeper on an island that isn't on any chart. Present day. Genealogist Ruth Vance buys a box of her great-great-grandfather's ledgers at an estate sale. The names match a historical society board that has guarded the island's founding story for a century—and would like to keep guarding it. As Verity closes in on a syndicate moving stolen lighthouse lenses through Puget Sound, Ruth uncovers a lens in a society attic and a ledger page hidden in a donated book. Two timelines, one crime: a man hanged after he was already dead. A Victorian historical mystery for readers of fogbound puzzles and inheritance thrillers.