After Tom Pollard's knee injury ends his basketball hopes, and his older brother Bob is killed in Vietnam, he drops out of Berkeley and slums as a bartender in a hippie haunt on Vancouver Island. In an attempt to rescue him, his conservative girlfriend Ruby takes a job teaching school there, but soon becomes weary of Tom's lost soul routine. When summer arrives, she returns home to Anaheim, indefinitely. In her absence, Tom overindulges in booze and drugs, until reality intrudes and forces him to confront death, loss, and the conspiring, malevolent universe. Fresh insightful, and often...

Bye Bye Bertie is the story of P.I. Joe LaFlam's struggle to be free from the fear of dying destitute and alone in an alley, under cardboard, just another discard of a world gone bad. His fear is magnified by doubts about his chosen profession. He has long sought to be a successful detective, but he has been thwarted by his incompetence and haunted by his insecurity. Bachelor LaFlam, who lives at home with his mother and who moonlights driving cab to pay the rent on his detective office, equates marriage with bliss and a successful career with bread on his future family's table. To be free...

Christian gumshoe Joe LaFlam is wallowing in an existential crisis when the stunning Sissy Smith slinks into his office with a plea for help. Her man Jake Dano has been lured away by another woman and led into the bowels of Spelunkers Global, a secret society bent on world domination with whom Joe previously tangled in the first of the LaFlam mystery series, Bye Bye Bertie. Joe is eager to take the case, knowing that exposing the scum will solidify his professional reputation and reinforce his earthly purpose. He goes undercover underground, where, entrenched as one of them, earthly...

Scheming to inherit the powerful pulpit of a mega-church, a pastor hires P.I. Jane Sunday to verify suspicions his father-in-law, the senior pastor, is having an affair. The case turns uglier when one dead pastor is found floating naked in his swimming pool, and Jane is hired by his widow to hunt the killer. Hot on the murder trail Jane is herself pursued by dreamboat lawyer Bertrand, but lasting memories of her abusive father inhibit the budding relationship, especially when questions of his credibility arise. Who killed the pastor? Is Bertrand true-blue? A hardboiled masterpiece of...

In the Cowichan Valley on beautiful Vancouver Island, a pastor's wife with a deep secret is dying of cancer, his young aboriginal convert is in danger of being grabbed and initiated into Longhouse spirit dancing rituals, and his congregation is throwing him to the wolves. In desperation, he attempts to recruit a local newspaper editor to publish the truth about the Longhouse. Along the way truth is put to the test, and when his wife's secret is revealed, so is their faith.