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The Derrick Dreadlow Series: (The series is best experienced from the beginning as the characters develop and grow over time.)
Life is complex, even on a good day. When you are a cop with a past, it can be even more so. Navigating life can be tricky. Everyone, friends, family, enemies, have their own ambitions, ghosts, and demons. You can’t always tell who is who or what is what. You also can’t escape. Not even in paradise.
Derrick Dreadlow is a Detective from New York City who takes a vacation to Hawaii to decompress and get his coplyness back after the murder of his wife. His second wife.
The series follows his adventures and cases as he decides to stay in the Pacific island paradise and leave his old life behind. It is a new and exciting place to live. No case is too big or too small. He quickly makes new friends, as well as a few enemies. But the past is always just a step away. Lurking in the shadows. And it’s not just his life. It’s not just his past. Everyone has a life. Everyone has a past. Everyone has plans for a future. A better future.
The mystique of Polynesia has always attracted those looking to escape the rest of the world. With its pristine sandy beaches, deep blue skies and lush tropical forests, it is an oasis of land surrounded by a vast ocean. Oahu, the gathering place, is a crossroads in his life and those around him.
Yet even a world away, his past and the past of his deceased wife, reaches out and haunts him. But then… so it is with everyone he meets. Together they try to sort it all out, to cope, to go on with their lives as best they can. They only have each other to depend on as the world swirls around them.
Mahalo – (Thank you)
Vol 16 is in the works
New Volume: Derrick Dreadlow: Vol 15 Who Did What? When? And Why?
Dark clouds gather along the horizon as the Christmas Holiday approaches.
Derrick and Pele each have a case of accidental drowning. Pele’s is on Oahu, while Derrick’s is on Maui. So much for their weekend off.
When Derrick returns to Oahu, they learn the people not only knew each other, but worked at the same company. The deeper they dig, the more confusing the cases become. As they investigate, more people disappear.
While Derrick and Pele try to untangle their new cases, Sergeant Trang finds himself on the wrong side of the Chief. He tries to learn to play nice with others and distance himself from Laurie Tomlyn after the Chief gives him a ticket to California to interview for a new job. For
Quon, as his business soars, his personal life crumbles.
Professor Keogh and the TV Producer are trying to set up an ongoing series investigating climate change for the new year. They want to cover what it means and what to do about it, with Haruku as the MC of the events. Meanwhile she and Senator Aneko are being attacked in the press by a group with hidden members. She has also received a personal warning.
If that wasn’t enough to keep them occupied, Paula is causing more trouble making life more difficult for her brother Paul.
On the plus side, Detective Soto gets a surprise.
Available at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Volume 1:
In New York City or in Paradise… Murder is Murder. However, when it hits home, it is more than that.
Derrick has been a detective in New York for over twenty years and he didn’t see it coming. And now… Burnout? Self-doubt? A combination? Whatever it is, Derrick Dreadlow has been off his game since the death of his wife. The murder of his wife.
Derrick’s captain tells him it is time to take a step back for a bit. He sends Derrick on a forced vacation to take stock of his life. He tells Derrick to get away from it all. Go somewhere different, a place where he can clear his head.
With ticket in hand, he leaves the snow and slush of the city and heads to Paradise. What better place to relax than Oahu. The Gathering Place. A Hawaiian island in the middle of the Pacific, where he can get away, unwind and recharge.
At first, he enjoys the balmy days, the white sand beaches, the spectacular views. But he’s not used to taking more than a day or two off at a time. Quickly, eight weeks of stored up vacation, even in paradise, begins to look like an eternity. Feeling restless, he learns of a case that no one else is interested in. As he adjusts to the slower pace of island life, his head clears. He starts thinking like a cop again.
The series follows Derrick Dreadlow as he finds new friends, new adventures, renewed vigor and… maybe even the possibility of new love.
Available at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Volume 2:
Alea iacta est – The die is cast. We follow Lieutenant Dreadlow as he decides to leave New York behind and take the job with the Honolulu Police Department. He is now officially a resident of Hawaii.
However, life is complex. And for Derrick it has always been like that. He thought paradise might be different. But before he even begins his new job, he finds himself jumping from one hot political frying pan into another.
He trades the mystery of his wife’s murder for the family ties of ‘The Three Friends’. Three friends tied together by marriage and family, but divided by the different paths they have chosen.
Now there is no going back as he slowly learns about the three friends, and adjusts to working with his new partner, while also solving a case of a missing co-ed.
He makes his own new friends as he settles into his new life in paradise. Old ties begin to fade. Almost. The death of his second wife still lurks in the background as he tries to uncover what happened, and who she really was.
Available now at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Volume 3:
The Dreadlow series continues as Derrick and his partner Pele Kobayashi, land a case to figure out who killed a favorite celebrity in Hawaii after he emceed the Waikiki Spam Festival. They learn that for a favorite celebrity, he had a lot of enemies. They uncover several prime suspects and even one eyewitness.
Unfortunately, their only witness won’t be allowed to testify in court.
As they pursue their suspects across the island of Oahu, Pele’s sister is found at a secluded beach, under some trees, left for dead. As they unravel what happened to her, Derrick finds himself sucked in deeper to the complex world of the three friends.
One of Derrick’s new friends, an intern in the police forensics lab named Quon Li, sets a big plan of his in motion.
Meanwhile, Derrick continues to unravel the mysterious life of his murdered wife. This time, she sends him a big a surprise. From beyond the grave.
Available now at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Volume 4:
Derrick continues to settle into his new life in the islands. Having been working since he arrived, he attempts to take another vacation. His goddaughters are coming for a visit. He hasn’t seen them since he left New York.
The Chief however has other plans putting Derrick in a bind. Derrick, Pele, and Captain Henderson are assigned to be the HPD’s welcome ambassadors at a police conference being hosted in Honolulu. He is faced with a choice… his career or the girls?
Things get further complicated for Derrick, when a series of deaths take place that could have international repercussions. He finds tentacles from his past, a past he is trying to keep in the past, reaching out to grab him as he is put in charge of the investigation that everyone higher up fully expects to fail. His friends are assigned to help him. If he goes down, they all do.
Available at: Kindle – Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Volume 5:
As the series continues, Derrick is still trying to adapt to life in the islands. One again he is reminded that life isn’t simple. Not even in paradise. His hopes for a clean break from the past are shattered. And he is slipping into new tangled webs of quests for power, control and deceit.
His goddaughters are with him as he tries to set aside time just for them. However, on the very first morning of his second attempt at a vacation with them, his ex-wife shows up to take his goddaughters away.
He is on very thin ice with his ex as he gets her to agree to let them stay. Under certain conditions. Things seem to be going better until they take off for a day at the beach. While getting a surfing lesson from his partner Pele and her sister, they all witness an explosive boating accident. Or was it?
While they dig deeper into the events surrounding the incident, they uncover a murder in California, and a document called the Blue Line Report. As their list of suspects grows, they also discover a tie to Tomas Kobayashi. The brother of Pele and her sister.
To make things worse, as he tries to restore some balance to his life and work, he finds disturbing clues that the veterinarian he has been dating may not be who he thought she was.
And he thought moving to paradise would be like living in paradise. How naive.
Available now at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Volume 6:
As Derrick’s life in the islands continues to unfold, he and Pele have missed their flight to New York to check on a couple of cases.
When they finally get there, he learns that his parents have a big surprise. He also learns that they have met Pele’s sister Haruku.
Being that it’s Pele’s first off island trip, it isn’t all work. During a break in fighting crime, Derrick takes Haruku to Broadway, while his friend Eddie takes Pele out to a night on the city. While on their date, Pele and Eddie try to help a woman in distress and are attacked for their trouble.
When they get back to Hawaii, Derrick receives a call from a friend in Italy asking for help on a missing person’s case. The case moves from a missing person to death. The question is, was it an accident? Kilauea? Or someone staying at the volcano lodge?
As they investigate these incidents, they learn that nothing about them was as it first appeared. And smoldering in the background, Pele’s brother is setting to unleash an eruption of his own on the family.
Available now at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Volume 7:
Derrick’s life gets more complicated as he takes another twist into the shadow world of a past he didn’t know about, and a collision with a world he wished he didn’t know about.
With no break from their last case, Derrick and Pele find themselves quickly sinking into new problems. Derrick receives a call from his friend Vincenzio in Italy. Someone has broken into the Villa his deceased wife left him. He decides it is finally time to go see what his murdered wife left him.
Unwilling to pass up a chance to Italy, they all decide to take a quick trip to see what happened, and hopefully, maybe learn more about why she was murdered. They find more questions than answers as they get tangled up in a game of cat and mouse across Europe with people they don’t know.
Before their plane even lands on the return trip back to Hawaii, Derrick gets a call from the Captain. There is someone missing, and he has been requested to find them.
As Derrick and Pele work their new case, she and her sister Haruku, are locked a family feud as their brother Tomas, tries to cut them out of the family business.
Available now at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Volume 8:
A hurricane clips Oahu. While not a storm for the record books, it creates opportunities for some, and stirs up events from the past for others. Mudslides close roads and power goes out in Honolulu. The ground gives up skeletons from the past. Ghosts long forgotten. Are they ancient Hawaiians? Victims of an accident? Or victims of murder?
Derrick and Pele are accumulating cases of dead and missing people faster than broken seashells on the beach after a storm.
As they dig deeper, they uncover clues that a possible gang war is brewing. Derrick also learns that some of his friends are victims of retaliation for looking into his deceased wife’s death.
Instead of moving forward, at every turn Derrick is slipping backward. Every clue just leads to a new question.
And if that weren’t enough, a reporter searching for a good story wonders if Derrick, his partner, and the Chief of police are in on a conspiracy that goes back over sixty years.
Are all these cases separate? Or, is someone pulling the strings from the shadows? Paradise has become anything but.
Availible now at: Kindle Amazon
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Volume: Volume 9
In the continuing series, this book picks up where ‘Whispers From The Dead’ leaves off. In the middle of the night, Derrick gets a phone call. His partner has just been arrested.
He is her only hope to prove her innocence. The arresting officers and the DA aren’t looking for anyone else because they believe they have an open and shut case. Even worse… their evidence seems to back them up.
The lead investigator has warned him to stay away from the case. Even the chief has ordered him not to work the case.
The captain has assigned Derrick a new partner as he tries to untangle his web of previous cases. He tried to juggle helping Pele as best he can while staying out of the view of the Internal Affairs Lieutenant, the chief, and a tenacious reporter who thinks they all have something to hide.
As if this weren’t enough, there are friends and supporters getting in the way of his investigation, making it all even harder.
Available now at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Vol 10:
In the continuing series, this book picks up where ‘Blood In The Water’ leaves off.
Lieutenant Derrick Dreadlow and his partner, Pele Kobayashi, are recovering from their last case that hit closer to home than they expected. They try to get back into a routine for what passes as normal for them.
They take on what should be a simple missing person’s case.
It turns out to be anything but simple.
As they dig deeper into the missing man’s past, they uncover love, abandonment, family meddling, and dark secrets.
Their search for the truth takes them to a place they never dreamed they would see.
Along the way, Derrick discovers a deli with the best pastrami on Rye that he has tasted since leaving New York.
Available at: Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Vol 11:
As our series continues, Derrick takes his band of friends and coworkers on a fun outing. But nothing ever seems to go as planned.
While on their team building exercise, Derrick and his team stumble across a body stuffed into an old drum. As he and his partner, Pele Kobayashi, dig deeper, they come across another body and uncover a growing list of people that are turning up missing.
Meanwhile, his fiancée, Haruku Kobayashi, is setting off on a fact-finding trip to understand how Hawaii and the family business could change in the coming years.
Derrick’s parents, along with her parents, are traveling with her as she tries to juggle her business and planning their wedding.
Derrick and Pele make a few enemies as they chase down clues to learn the identity of the bodies and search for the missing people. As they put the pieces together, another clue to Derrick’s past life emerges.
Available at: Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Vol 12
Derrick and Haruku’s wedding day finally arrives. Friends come from around the world to take part in the event on Maui. It is a day none of them will forget.
Available at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow – Vol 13 French Vanilla
While Derrick and Pele are enjoying some well deserved time off, he receives a simple request from Captain Henderson. The captain tells Derrick it will only take a few phone calls that he can do from anywhere.
When no one answers, the favor turns into something much bigger.
The story begins with the everyday staples of greed and ambition. Then we toss in a dollop of infidelity, a dash of sibling rivalry, and a tablespoon of vanilla. What we get is a generous serving of international intrigue, seasoned with ulterior motives and salted with revenge.
All this swirls around them as Pele tries to cope with a world that is changing around her. She must also confront the fact that Eddie is an increasingly larger part of her changing world.
Quon is pulled farther from his dream of sitting in a lab, inventing things, just as Haruku is drawn deeper into a changing view of the world herself.
Available at: Kindle Amazon
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Derrick Dreadlow: Vol 14 The Honey Pot
Lieutenant Derrick Dreadlow came to Hawaii on a forced vacation from the NYPD.
Though he couldn’t entirely escape the memories and reminders of his deceased wife, Lynn, he gave it his best shot. If he pursued his search for the truth, he would be dismissed from the NYPD on his return to New York.
As he spent time in paradise, he realized he didn’t know his wife as well as he thought he did. He decided it was time to let go and move on with his life.
As he settled in and found new friends and love, he discovered a new life and reasons to keep pushing forward.
However, from time to time, something would pull him back. A nagging reminder that there was a part of her life she kept secret from him, a part he couldn’t escape.
As the anniversary of Lynn’s murder approaches, her past casts a darkening chill across paradise and beyond.
But is he now a Lieutenant in the Honolulu Police Department. As Derrick and his partner, Detective Pele Kobayashi, deal with the twisting case of a missing woman, little did he expect that Lynn’s shadowed past would come roaring back to life.
Once again, Derrick finds himself called upon to clean up a mess that others created. But this time, he isn’t on a mission alone.
However, as he tries to wrap his head around Lynn’s secret past, Pele slips deeper and deeper into a changing world she doesn’t want to face. Pele tries to find ways of coping as her perception of reality becomes more and more blurred. She buys new cars and a big house. She learns how to fly a plane. She also hones another skill.
Together, Derrick, Pele, and their friends push forward in fighting crime and uncovering the truth.
Available at: Kindle Amazon
julienrapp Mysteries - Real and Imagined 