Lost and Found and Lost Again

Three decades ago, a predatory high school Principal sexually assaulted a number of his female students, one of whom subsequently took her own life. Despite the courage of one fifteen-year-old girl who reported the assaults, nothing was done to help her. Ten years later, at a school board meeting, that same girl, now in her mid-twenties, repeated her claims. Derek Sloan, Acting-Director of Education, immediately reported her accusations to police, and began his own investigation. The Principal was subsequently convicted of the offenses in a court of law. Now, thirty years after the assaults were first reported, that former Principal is murdered by an unknown assailant. Within a week, two more men who were complicit in the cover-up are murdered. As police investigate the killings, Derek is drawn in because of his history with the young woman. Now in her early-forties, the woman also turns to Maggie Keiller for emotional support as the new investigation swirls. Over the next several weeks, three more men are murdered, and police struggle to find a connection between them and the victims of the first three killings. And in a development that may be related, the Premier of the province suffers a stroke at his secluded cottage while entertaining a mysterious woman who has ties to the original sexual assault victims. The Premier’s links to those long-ago events slowly come to light as Maggie and Derek dig further into these traumatic events. Meanwhile, the community has fallen prey to a truckers’ blockade funded by a coalition of western-separatist, white-supremacist groups, seeking to disrupt commerce in the province and overthrow the government. Violence erupts where the blockaders are encamped, further stretching police resources. Finally, in a heart-stopping confrontation at their home on Georgian Bay, Maggie and Derek are themselves threatened by the vengeful killers as they try to protect the woman at the centre of everything.