Fake Out, the first in the Long Beach Mystery series, set on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island in the 1960s.
Fake Out is now available at Möbius Books in Port Alberni, Mermaid Tales Bookshop in Tofino, Blackberry Cove Marketplace in Ucluelet, Blue Heron Books in Comox, Laughing Oyster Bookshop in Courtenay, Mulberry Bush Book Store in Qualicum Beach, Sea and Summit Bookshop in Parksville, and Volume One Bookstore in Duncan. It is also available online through outlets such as Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Apple, Barns & Noble, and Smashwords.
About the story:
In the spring of 1968, 20-year-old Sandy Chambers is restless and doesn’t know why. All around her she sees people of her generation pushing back against the Establishment: inciting riots, marching in protests, participating in sit-ins or be-ins. She hasn’t even lit a joint, let alone smoked it. The eldest of two children she has spent her life pleasing her loving but overly protective parents. Even her enrollment in art college had been made with them in mind. So, she quit. She walked away from her second year of art college and stuck her thumb out. She hitchhiked from Victoria to the remote edge of Canada’s west coast in order to experience the hippie freedom she had heard so much about.
At first everything was perfect. She stood at the end of a post-card perfect Vancouver Island beach, with the sun making a shimmering jewel of the ocean, and a man worthy of a Playgirl centrefold gazing back at her.
But then it all changed. The sand fleas started biting, the open-pit latrines stank, and her 22-year-old lover Geoff turned up dead.
A combination of guilt and curiosity prompts Sandy to search for her lover’s killer, bringing her up against the efforts of RCMP Corporal David Moore of the Ucluelet detachment and two out-of-town specialist officers from the major crimes unit in Victoria.
To support herself in her new life, Sandy takes a job as a chambermaid at the Wickaninnish Inn, a new hotel built on a rocky outcrop at the south end of Long Beach, and shares a large beach cabin, referred to as The Lodge, with four other staff members.
When the body of a local First Nations man, Danny Brown, is found buried in the cast-off pile behind an abandoned prospector’s cabin, questions of loyalty are raised among the roommates as the police search for a link between the murders.
Set on the remote west coast of Vancouver Island, this mystery story is the first of a series which will revolve around fictional characters living and working at the original Wickaninnish Inn, built on the south end of Long Beach in 1964, and how the creation of Canada’s first west coast marine national park impacted them.