julienrapp Mysteries – Real and Imagined  

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.

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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.

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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.

Derrick 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Derrick 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 in a family feud as their brother Tomas, tries to cut them out of the family business.

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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.

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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. Derrick 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.

Derrick tries 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.

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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.

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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, Derrick’s 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.

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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.

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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 Derrick’s friend, 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.

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Derrick 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.

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 a new wife. 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 Lynn’s 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.

Derrick and his partner, Pele, 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.

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. She 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.

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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 that the people not only knew each other, but also 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 nicely 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, Haruku 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 everyone occupied, Paula is causing more trouble, making life more difficult for her brother Paul.

On the plus side, Detective Soto gets a surprise.

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Captain Henderson asks that Derrick look into an art theft on the other side of Oahu. As Derrick and Pele dig deeper, they discover a trail leading to a woman with a questionable history. She also owns the house from which the art was stolen. And she lives in Europe.

They also learn that some people they dealt with in a previous case aren’t who they appeared to be. And the woman owning the art isn’t the only, or even the biggest danger, involved in the case.

 As Derrick and Pele continue their investigation of the art theft, another incident, also emanating from Europe, unleashes a surge of events that will disrupt and alter many lives caught in its path.

This series of events has ties to another woman, who may also be in Europe. Her exact whereabouts are unknown. However, there is no question of her history.

Derrick and Pele aren’t sure if both cases are tied together. But the paths of two people involved in both have crossed in the past. Either way, the two cases threaten to unleash a tsunami of change for Derrick and his friends.

As events unfold, Derrick and Pele also learn of Haruku’s deepest and darkest secrets.

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When we last saw Derrick, he had a choice to make. He was divided between his career with the HPD and the responsibility of taking over a large part of his friend’s company

Thirteen years have passed since Chief Murdoch asked Derrick to take a few weeks off to decide how to spend the rest of his career.

Derrick made his choice.

Many things have changed. People have changed. Yet some things are the same.

Crime hasn’t changed. Though it is evolving to new heights. And the stakes are higher. Available now at: Kindle Amazon