A Moretti and Falla Mystery Series

On the English Channel Island of Guernsey, Detective Inspector Ed Moretti and his new partner, Liz Falla, investigate vicious attacks on Epicure Films. The international production company is shooting a movie based on British bad-boy author Gilbert Ensor’s bestselling novel about an Italian aristocratic family at the end of the Second World War, using fortifications from the German occupation of Guernsey as locations, and the manor house belonging to the expatriate Vannonis. When vandalism escalates into murder, Moretti must resist the attractions of Ensor’s glamorous American wife, Sydney, consolidate his working relationship with Falla, and establish whether the murders on Guernsey go beyond the island. Why is the Marchesa Vannoni in Guernsey? What is the significance of the design that appears on the daggers used as murder weapons, as well as on the Vannoni family crest? And what role does the marchesas statuesque niece, Giulia, who runs the family business and is probably bisexual, really play?

In the first novel in the Barkerville Mystery series, protagonist Ted MacIntosh tries to unravel a suspicious murder with possible fatal consequences. lt’s summer in 1866 in the Cariboo gold fields, and a man has disappeared. Young Ted learns from the local barber, Moses, that his friend Charles, who was travelling to the gold fields, has failed to arrive. And a forbidding stranger named James Barry has arrived in town wearing a gold nugget pin that belonged to the missing man. What could have happened to him? Was James Barry responsible for his disappearance? Moses and Ted are suspicious – but they’re also afraid for their own safety. Slowly, with several adventures and close calls, they unravel the story of a cruel murder. But have they identified the right criminal? Shortlisted for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction, based on true events, and set against the exciting backdrop of the Gold Rush era, Moses, Me, and Murder offers a captivating tale of betrayal, thievery, and redemption.

There’s nowhere to hide from international intrigue and murder most foul even on an island as small as Guernsey. Second in the Moretti and Falla Mystery series. In St. Peter Port Harbour on the Channel Island of Guernsey, Detective Inspector Ed Moretti and his partner, Detective Sergeant Liz Falla, are called in to investigate the shooting death of arms dealer Bernard Masterson on the Just Desserts, his luxury yacht. Why are Masterson, his glamorous partner in crime, Adèle Letourneau, and his thuggish bodyguard here on the island? And how are an ex-Folies Bergère dancer, a former espionage agent, and a wealthy sax-playing financier involved – or are they? With the knowledge that there’s nowhere to hide in a world now as small as his island, and not knowing whom to trust in a mystery involving money and international intrigue, Moretti goes to London in search of answers, returning to Guernsey for a violent showdown on the Just Desserts. Watch for Blood WIll Out arriving September 2014.

In this third book in the series, can Moretti and Falla solve a mysterious case of vampirism? While investigating the apparent suicide of a hermit, Detective Inspector Ed Moretti and his partner, Liz Falla, of the Guernsey Police have to deal with what seems to be an outbreak of vampirism. Can the threat be real? Or is it something possibly provoked by Hugo Shawcross, who is writing a play about vampires for a local theatre group, and who narrowly escapes becoming the first victim? As the investigation unfolds, links begin to emerge between the hermit’s death, the play in progress, and the tangled lives of one of the Channel Islands’ most prestigious families. With the dubious help of island witches, and the distraction of his partner’s seductive aunt, Moretti employs all his deductive skills to see where the truth lies. Is it to be found among the clues about vampirism and the living dead that present themselves? Or is it buried deep in the past among hidden motives of sex, love, and obsession? The pressure is on Moretti and Falla to uncover the real reason before the attacker strikes again.

Short-listed for the 1999 Sheila A. Egoff Award for Children’s Literature and Geoffrey Bilson Award Ann Walsh’s sequel to Moses, Me and Murder (Pacific Educational Press) continues the adventures of Ted, now 14. Still tormented by the ghost of murderer James barry, Ted apprentices to the eccentric doctor J.B. Wilkinson, whose dependency on opium for his patients and for his own demons reveals a past intertwined with the life and death of an enigmatic woman named sophia Cameron.

In By the Skin of His Teeth, 17-year-old Ted MacIntosh, whom author Ann Walsh showcased earlier in Moses, Me and Murder and The Doctor’s Apprentice, befriends a young Chinese boy despite the intense prejudice seething in the frontier town. Ted suffers intimidation and violence at the hands of the cruel, arrogant Tremblay and his cronies, but with courage and conviction the young man stands up for what he believes and defends his Chinese friend.