Iona Whishaw has been a youth worker, social worker, teacher, and award-winning high school principal. However, throughout her professional life, she has always continued to write. Her popular historical mystery series, The Lane Winslow Mysteries, has garnered her numerous accolades. Iona was born in Kimberly, British Columbia, Canada, but grew up in various places, including BC’s Kootenay Lake, the USA, Mexico, and Central America.
Iona says her fictional heroine, Lane Winslow, was inspired in part by her mother, Lorna Whishaw, who she later discovered had been a spy during WWII. Lorna gathered intelligence for the British government while living in South Africa as a young woman. Iona describes her mother as “extremely beautiful, very brilliant.” Lorna was recruited because she spoke several languages, including Russian and German, and attended parties with German officers to eavesdrop. Iona also learned that her Latvian grandfather, along with his two brothers, had been spies during both world wars, working for MI6.
Throughout her life, Iona’s mother never lost her flair for adventure. In an interview with Montecristo Magazine, Iona shared, “When I was three, she hitchhiked to Alaska with truck drivers while my dad was away. She packed woolly socks and warm pants—and an evening gown.” Her mother also had a knack for talking herself out of dangerous situations. Once, while living in France, a man broke into her home brandishing a knife, but she talked him down and even made him a nice dinner. On another occasion in Mexico, her mother was kidnapped by two bus drivers, but she convinced them to drive her home, where she fed them dinner as well.
Iona has also been inspired by where she grew up. She set her mysteries in her hometown in the Kootenays. “When I was a little girl, I lived just up the road from Nelson, near Balfour, about 35 miles away. Lane lives in my home,” she told CBC. “When I started writing those books, I felt like I was living there again, in the innocence of my childhood.”
Just before retiring from teaching, Iona decided to pursue her dream of writing a novel. She had previously written poetry and a children’s book. In 2016, at the age of 64, she published A Killer in King’s Cove and has since written eleven Lane Winslow mysteries thus far.
