Long before there was a National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, or a National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, there were just missing and murdered women and children. At the same time the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary executed Operation Wormwood in St. John’s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police launched Operation Vanished, a province-wide investigation into missing and murdered women and children. RCMP Corporal Gail McNaughton has just transferred into the Major Crime Unit at headquarters in St. John’s. As the newest investigator, she is given a stack of missing people and murder files from the 1950s to "sharpen her skills." This is standard procedure for the new kid on the block. These files are challenging and difficult to investigate. Most of the witnesses have died or have aged. Memories fade, scenes were never secured, and DNA testing was not available. Closing any of these files would be near impossible without a confession. Corporal McNaughton befriends Larry Morgan, the son of one of the murdered women, and who is a Newfoundland and Labrador historical expert. Together they put together a list of transient people who would have visited the communities where each victim lived but would have gone unnoticed. From this list, McNaughton creates a list of suspects and begins to dig up ghosts from the past. She discovers that the files may be linked and sets out to prove her theory that a serial killer may have been operating in Newfoundland during the 1950s. Throughout the novel, Corporal McNaughton balances the care of her mother, who suffers from dementia, the jealousy of a sergeant who constantly belittles her, and night terrors that haunt her dreams

Helen C. Escott is the author of the widely read blog-turned-book I Am Funny Like That, which has over 222,000 readers, and two bestselling crime thrillers: Operation Wormwood, which was nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel in 2019; and Operation Vanished, which was the Silver Medal Winner for Best Regional Fiction, awarded by the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Both Operation Vanished and Operation Wormwood have appeared in the Atlantic Books Today top 5 bestsellers lists. Her fourth book is, In Search of Adventure: 70 Years of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Newfoundland and Labrador, which profiles retired RCMP members and commemorates their service. And her fifth book, Operation Wormwood: The Reckoning, is the exciting conclusion to the crime novel Operation Wormwood.Helen is used to blazing trails. She is a retired civilian member of the world-renowned Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). In 1998, she created the RCMP’s Media Relations/ Communications Unit in Newfoundland and Labrador, and she became the first female senior communications strategist and media relations spokesperson for the RCMP in that province.Escott was the communications lead on high-profile events, including the RCMP’s Newfoundland and Labrador response on September 11 after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in New York City. During her service, she wrote and implemented the Atlantic Region Communication Strategies to combat organized crime and outlaw biker gangs, created the Media Relations course and guidebook used by the RCMP, and was invited to teach the Media Relations course for senior management and RCMP members at the Canadian Police College, Ottawa. Helen is regularly asked to teach this course to other uniformed services. She also served as a communications strategist at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.Before joining the RCMP, Helen C. Escott worked in the media for 13 years in various positions, including reporter, on-air personality, marketing, and promotions.In 2017, she was presented with the CLB Governor and Commandant’s Medallion in recognition of her achievements of excellence in volunteering and fundraising work, including creating the idea and concept for the Spirit of Newfoundland dinner theatre show Where Once They Stood, a tribute to the Church Lads’ Brigade members who served at Beaumont Hamel.Helen also volunteers with St. Mark’s Anglican Church and created a successful communication strategy to bring people, especially families and members of the LGBTQ community, back to the church.In 2019, she was presented with the Governor General’s Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers.

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Donna Morrissey was born in The Beaches, a small village on the northwest coast of Newfoundland that had neither roads nor electricity until the 1960s a place not unlike Haire’s Hollow, which she depicts in Kit’s Law. When she was sixteen, Morrissey left The Beaches and struck out across Canada, working odd jobs from bartending to cooking in oil rig camps to processing fish in fish plants. She went on to earn a degree in social work at Memorial University in St. Johns. It was not until she was in her late thirties that Morrissey began writing short stories, at the urging of a friend, a Jungian analyst, who insisted she was a writer. Eventually she adapted her first two stories into screenplays, which both went on to win the Atlantic Film Festival Award; one aired recently on CBC. Kit’s Law is Morrissey’s first novel, the winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association First-Time Author of the Year Award and shortlisted for many prizes, including the Atlantic Fiction Award and the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Morrissey lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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