The La Chance Mine Mystery

Nick Stretton paddles home across Lac Tremblant in a November gale, back to the La Chance gold mine after three months of cutting a road through the bush. He beaches the canoe in the dark and a woman grips his shoulder, mistakes him for a man she loathes, and orders him off the place before she gives him away. She calls herself Paulette Brown, she has been brought out to marry Stretton’s partner Dudley Wilbraham, and Wilbraham’s sister is certain the name is invented. The mine’s gold sits in the house, waiting to be freighted out to Caraquet. Susan Morrow Jones published this in 1920 as S. Carleton, and the wolves, swamp and freezing water carry as much of the book as the detection does.