Book Length Works

Exit Strategy (May 17, 2022, Oceanview Publishing)
The assignment is to protect someone. Being a hired killer has taken its toll, though not as much as losing her whole family did before she made that abrupt career change. She’s tired, but keeping the beautiful CTO of a unicorn company alive seems worthwhile. There are complications and some people have to die so that she can fully protect the person who has invented a technology that will change the whole world for good. “Provocative and powerful.” — Bestselling author Gayle Lynds

When Blood Lies (September 2016, Orca Publishing)
Vancouver Post gossip columnist Nicole Charles is only slightly put out when she discovers she’s been downsized. She figures she’s lucky to still have a job. It just means she needs to get a desk so she can work out of her apartment. But the desk she buys at auction proves to have more history than she’d anticipated, and the cache she finds in a secret compartment in that desk has links to a money-laundering ring, and an old school-mate. Will this be the story that lands Nicole a job on the news desk? Even while she struggles to solve the case, she wonders if she’ll ever get the recognition she figures she deserves. When Blood Lies is the second novel in a series of mysteries featuring rookie reporter Nicole Charles.

If It Bleeds (September 2014, Orca Publishing)
Nicole Charles didn’t go to journalism school to become a gossip columnist, but the job fell into her lap right out of school and her immigrant work ethic just won’t let her quit to find something she’d like better. It’s a good job, but she struggles with the stigma attached to her position by other reporters. More than anything, she wants to be a real reporter, but it looks like she’s never going to get a chance. Then one night while covering a gallery opening, she discovers a dead body in a dark alley. An up-and-coming artist has been stabbed in the throat with an antique icepick. Nicole is right in the middle of the biggest story of the year. It’s the chance of a lifetime. Too bad someone had to die to make it happen.

Death Was in the Blood (2013, FiveStar)
In the third Kitty Pangborn novel, Kitty finds herself challenged by what-might-have-beens. When Dex is charged with finding out who’s threatening a wealthy industrialist’s daughter, Kitty discovers herself back in the social class she was raised to, only now she’s expected to come in the service entrance. It doesn’t help that the young woman they’ve hired to look out for her doesn’t want Dex and Kitty’s protection: she’s headstrong, willful, and — in many ways — not unlike Kitty herself.

Set against the backdrop of preparation for the 1932 Olympic games, Death Was in the Blood takes the reader smack-dab into the lost history of the City of Angels, and the point where Kitty discovers what it means to give it up and let it go.

Death Was in the Picture (2009, St. Martin’s Minotaur)
In 1931, while most of Los Angeles is struggling to survive the Depression, the business of Hollywood is booming. Kitty’s boss, private detective Dexter Theroux, has been asked to help leading man Laird Wyndham prove his innocence. The actor was the last person to be seen with a young actress who died under very suspicious circumstances, and the star has fallen from the big screen to the big house. Wyndham’s a dreamboat, but that isn’t the only thing that has Kitty hot under the collar. Dex has already signed a client—one who’s hired him to prove Wyndham’s hands are not as clean as they look.

Mixing Hollywood glitz with hard-boiled grit, Death Was in the Picture captures the essence of life in Depression-era Los Angeles: a world where times are tough, talk is cheap, and murder is often just one scene away.

Death Was the Other Woman (2008, St. Martin’s Minotaur)
As the lawlessness of Prohibition pushes against the desperation of the Depression, there are two ways to make a living in Los Angeles: join the criminals or collar them. Kitty Pangborn has chosen the crime-fighters, becoming secretary to Dexter J. Theroux, one of the hard-drinking, tough-talking PIs who pepper the city’s stew. But after Dex takes an assignment from Rita Heppelwaite, the mistress of Harrison Dempsey, one of L.A.’s shadiest–and richest–businessmen, Kitty isn’t so sure what side of the law she’s on.

 

Calculated Loss (2006, Mira Books)
It’s been years since former stockbroker Madeline Carter bothered thinking about her gastronomically gifted ex-husband, Chef Braydon Gauthier. But it doesn’t take long to realize Braydon’s death is more murder than suicide. So who’s responsible? Madeline definitely has her suspicions, but one thing’s clear: in the pressure-cooker world of high cuisine and higher stakes, a reputation is worth killing for.

 

The Next Ex (2005, Mira Books)
Like Sunset Boulevard meets Boiler Room, with elements of classic Hollywood — both old and new — plus the high-paced, high tech high jinx of the contemporary financial world.”

A bracingly intelligent whodunit.” — Laura Lippman 

 

Mad Money (2004, Mira Books)
When her best friend is killed in front of her at the New York City brokerage where they both work, Madeline Carter quits her job and aims for a safer life on the warm coast. But life has a way of interrupting the best laid plans and it isn’t long before Madeline’s quiet new life of day trading in the Malibu hills is interrupted by kidnapping, murder and a run-in with a corporate psychopath.

 

Teach Yourself Photoshop (1998, Henry Holt/MIS Press)

Web Graphics for Dummies (1997 IDG Books)

The Greater Vancouver Book (1997, contributed two articles, anthology edited by Chuck Davis)

The Canadian Business Guide to Using the Internet (1995, Self-Counsel Press)

Screenplays

Raincity
Pilot for set-in-Vancouver television series

The Indigo Factor
Treatment for feature film. Optioned by Rampage Entertainment (option lapsed).