MikeDePaoli

Something's wrong with Rachel. Ever since she visited Sadie T. Diamond, an acquaintance of the Lawrence Street Detective Club, in prison, she's been acting strangely, talking to someone who isn't there and sleepwalking during the day. Al, her husband, and Lauren, living with them now, see it most but can do the least about it with their hands full raising Sarah Jane, their baby, who'd just appeared out of thin air a month ago following their merging of two timelines.That's not the only thing worrying them. Joe, Lauren's husband, who'd sent her over to live with Al and Rachel after discovering Sarah Jane wasn't his, is suddenly being cagey about his movements. Is he seeing someone else already? And what about Tej, Sunny's wife, who's suddenly turning off her phone during the day?Then there's Daphne, Al's half-sister, who wants Lauren to track someone down for her as a private investigator, and she won't tell Al why.But there's no way Al, Lauren, Joe, Sunny and Tej can predict that Lauren's search for Daphne's quarry, Tej's sudden interest in helping her, and Rachel's increasingly worrying condition will intersect with an old adversary rearing her pretty head, and even a long-lost family member of Rachel's appearing out of nowhere, creating tragic consequences for the entire LSDC family.And for Rachel, the decisions they all make can mean life or death...…

MikeDePaoli

In this sixth novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club series, all the world's a stage, and Rachel, Al, Lauren, Joe and Sunny find themselves playing parts scripted for them deep in the past, forced into acting when all they want is a quiet, content summer after an eventful fall and winter that saw many of their number injured and out of commission. A new tragedy, the passing of Joe's father, has them reminiscing and looking at old pictures in Al's photo albums, and a series of pictures Al's never seen before has them on a new case, trying to find more information about Sadie T. Diamond, the author of a chalk message claiming to have committed the perfect murder. What none of them know yet is that Sadie is closer than they think, and inordinately interested in them, why, they have to figure out, and quickly, because other revelations are coming at them fast and hard: Val, wife of Johnny, Joe's brother, has walked out on her husband after discovering he cheated on her, leaving her phone behind and going off the grid; Omar, Rachel's first boyfriend, walks back into her life when he hires Lauren's firm to investigate a colleague; and Rachel gets the shock of her life when she attends a play and discovers one of the actors shares a name with a boy she hasn't seen in over thirty years, a boy who's supposed to be dead.With no time for an intermission, because a triple murder has them all on their guard, they must find out why these events are happening, and what their connection is, because, though they don't know it yet, they're all going to be on the stage for the final act that has them travelling to a place from which they might never return, to do a deed that will change things forever...…

MikeDePaoli

Two years have passed since the five members of the Lawrence Street Detective Club reunited in the novel, "We Find What Is Lost," picking up where they left off thirty years earlier, to help Rachel clear her name and take down the man who framed her for embezzling. Since then, Al and Rachel married, but Rachel and Lauren haven't stopped seeing each other, and things take a darker, sexier turn in this follow-up novel, which opens with Al and Lauren waking up in each other's arms with no memory of how they got there and no idea where their spouses went. Joe and Rachel are missing, and Al, Lauren and Sunny must piece together what happened to them the night before and track down Joe and Rachel with whatever tools they have at hand, getting help from a friend from Lauren's own past. Someone has it out for one of the members of the club, and Lauren, whose uniqueness was only hinted at in the last novel, takes centre stage solving this mystery, with past events from the last novel, revisited through her point of view, providing the clues.…

MikeDePaoli

By the end of the last novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club, "The Hero Next Time," Al Mackenzie, husband of Rachel, adoptive father to Logan and Emma, was still in a coma after a terrible car accident. This fifth novel in the series opens with a subdued LSDC, three of whose members are injured or out of commission, all of them hoping Al will wake up.Unbeknownst to them, Al isn't just lying there; he's gaining a few insights of his own with the help of a couple of guides, one of whom happens to be the ghost of the man he thought was his father. By the time he wakes, he'll know his real father is alive and still out there, and there's a whole family of half-siblings he'll need to reconnect with.Into this battered and bruised group comes a blast from Al's past: Agnes, a former girlfriend, on the run and far from home, with two kids in tow. Her husband's a cop, and he may have committed a murder, and he's just transferred to the Langley detachment of the RCMP, where Sergeant Joanie Mara, reeling from a betrayal from Joe, is immediately attracted to him, unaware of his past. Joanie, who's always played a supporting role with the LSDC, shines in this first novel to feature her narrative as she takes on the role of media relations officer, outwits a stalker, and inevitably finds herself ensnared in a revenge plot stretching hundreds of miles back to a family used to getting what it wants and willing to kill to get it. If Joanie is to survive, she'll need the help of everyone in the LSDC, even if they're not at their best: Joe, her former lover; Lauren, Joe's wife and a private investigator who first discovered the plot; Rachel, the woman behind Joe's betrayal; Sunny, a family lawyer who helps Agnes free herself from her marriage; Tej, Sunny's wife and a real estate agent, who has her own first-time narrative in this book; and finally, Al, whose new family connections bring him and Agnes back to the place from where Agnes fled, and into the lion's den.…

MikeDePaoli

Only a month has elapsed since the Lawrence Street Detective Club went back in time to rescue Sunny's daughter and stop a bad man, but the ripple effects of their changing history are beginning to make themselves known in this seventh novel of the series. Sunny Parhar, still adjusting to having his sister back in his life, has made a secret habit of keeping an eye on the man who murdered her in the timeline they knew, but is now free and with a new family of his own. Little does he know that the man will soon get himself tangled in a new intrigue that has nothing to do with him, but everything to do with Joe DiTomaso; suddenly, bones are showing up on Joe's construction sites, and he has to rally his friends, and a few unlikely acquaintances, to help him get ahead of this crisis before the media attention tanks his business.And Bishan Parhar, Sunny's sister, reeling from the discovery that she was dead in another timeline, travels with Rachel, Lauren, Tej and Joanie to a wellness centre in the Okanagan to investigate the circumstances leading to the arrest of Lauren's business partner for the murder of a man who, in another timeline, should still be in jail. And if that isn't bad enough, an old friend of Rachel's returns to warn them that even more changes are coming to threaten everything they love.…

MikeDePaoli

Rachel, Al, Lauren, Joe and Sunny grew up together in Queensborough in the late Seventies, solidifying their friendship by forming the Lawrence Street Detective Club. They found a lost pet or two, and even gained brief fame by helping a kid escape his abusive father with the help of Martha Anderson, a kind older woman on their street. They eventually moved away, but never forgot each other, and thirty years later the memorial for Mrs. Anderson reunites them. Rachel, an accountant fired over an embezzlement scandal, divorced, broke and persecuted on social media, would rather not have her old friends know about her troubles, or about her new friend, who may or may not be a symptom of her deteriorating mental condition, but her sudden assignment as executor for Mrs. Anderson's estate forces her to depend on them. Al, infatuated with Rachel since they were children, helps her catalogue the contents of Mrs. Anderson's house but discovers a new mystery requiring the Lawrence Street Detective Club to get back on the case. Lauren, now a private investigator and married to Joe, never lost the knack for the work they did when they were kids, and works to clear Rachel's name while also reconciling with her own feelings for her. Sunny, the lawyer representing Mrs. Anderson's estate, helps Rachel fight back when the man who originally framed her for embezzlement now wants her removed as executor. And when a shocking development draws them all into helping another of his victims, they'll need to rely on each other more than ever before as they risk losing everything they worked for.…

MikeDePaoli

In the previous novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club, "Err on the Side of Violence," Emma told Sunny, "You'll get to be the hero next time." Finally, in this pivotal fourth novel, Sunil Singh Parhar, barrister and solicitor, gets his day in the sun, and it couldn't come at a better time; the LSDC is facing a threat to its very existence. Joe and Lauren are still living apart, talking to a marriage counsellor. Rachel and Al are still living in Lauren's house, exacerbating the problems in Joe and Lauren's marriage. Lauren can't seem to give up Al, and no one seems to be happy. Into this blasted landscape lands a crisis none of them could have ever expected, just as Sunny is in the middle of a campaign for City Council. Jordan Trevelyan, the man who once dated Sunny's late sister, has turned up again, claiming another woman he's dating has gone missing, and Sunny, who's never gotten over how he failed his sister, can't turn him away. When the LSDC investigates, however, they find the case isn't as simple as Jordan thinks it is, and when they attract the attention of the wrong people in high places, they'll find themselves in more danger than they've ever faced before, and one of them will be brought to the brink of death itself.…

MikeDePaoli

In this third novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club, a year has passed since the events of "Rude Awakenings." Rachel and Al are now foster parents to a teenage brother and sister, whose alcoholic mother is back in rehab. As respectable a family as they may be, they haven't given up their relationship with Lauren, who is still married to Joe, whose narrative is central to this story. He's in his own relationship with Joanie Mara, a sergeant in the RCMP, an arrangement sanctioned by Lauren herself that isn't without its hiccups.Into this powder keg of emotions lands a crisis that draws the LSDC unwillingly into a world of drugs, trafficking and murder, when Logan, the foster son, finds himself in custody after a midnight deal goes horribly wrong and his mother is found dead under suspicious circumstances. Protecting him from people who don't have his best interests at heart proves to be harder than they imagined, especially after Joe, increasingly suspicious of Lauren and Al, makes a decision that sets off a series of destructive events. But when tragedy strikes and Logan falls into danger, can the five childhood friends rise above their conflicts and work to save his life?…