Janet LaPierre Books In Order

Baby Mine

A Town in Trouble

Port Silva, California Elevation 100 feet Established 1885 Population 24,020

Now high school teacher Meg and her police chief husband are back, along with other memorable townspeople, in LaPierre’s new novel of suspense. Baby Mine is the sixth in the series and the first to be published by Perseverance Press/John Daniel and Company. Told with LaPierre’s characteristic subtlety and power, Baby Mine depicts a difficult time for the Northern California seaside town, as well as for Meg and Vince’s marriage.

Drawn from the news stories of the nineties, Baby Mine brings to life the human consequences of such social forces as a depressed economy, an overstressed environment, and an influx of immigrants straining limited resources. These influences come together in the dramatic and mysterious events at a local fertility clinic. Port Silva’s web of small town relationships is fraying; unemployment, racism, and religious zealotry collide to produce an unprecedented crime wave; and Meg and Vince must help their town recover its interconnectedness and save itself.

Keepers

Meet two new, fascinating Port Silva characters, Patience and Verity Mackellar, a mother daughter private investigative team. Patience, a policeman’s widow, has kept her late husband’s PI agency. Verity, seeking refuge from a troubled marriage, joins her mother to do the legwork. Finding lost pets and exposing unethical doctors leads to more difficult and dangerous work. A lost child forces the duo undercover into a reclusive religious community. Amid the spectacular beauty of the Northern California’s dramatic Mendocino Coast the Lost Coast two sets of mothers and daughters find their lives in jeopardy.

Death Duties

LaPierre’s eighth Port Silva mystery, where the spirit of the quiet, dramatic north country is the setting for profound insights into family relationships. Hired by Christina Larson, as a deathbed promise, to clear her grandfather’s name of a pedophilia accusation from thirty years ago, Verity Mackellar and her mother, Patience, aka Patience Smith, Investigations, take the case. The Mackellars are initially reluctant: Patience believes it will reopen old wounds. Verity sees success as unlikely and onetime friend Chris as disagreeable. Then Verity reads the old man’s bitter suicide note, ”They’ve left me nothing…
I damn them to hell, whoever they are.”

Family Business

In late 2002, with the prospect of war in Iraq looming, an unauthorized and peaceful anti war protest march in Port Silva degenerates suddenly into a riot, filling the jail and the emergency room. Private investigators Patience and Verity Mackellar are hired to look into the background of one missing protester and find that he has none. But there is a Family Business, old secrets cover ups and crimes lurking in the past. As the plot plays out, we learn the importance of good parenting, especially fathering of boys, and the necessity for children to know they are loved. As the W.H. Auden poem September 1, 1939 says, ‘…
What all schoolchildren learn/ Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.’ Above all these issues is the nature of a democracy and its citizens? responsibility when their government defies their wishes. All shades of opinion are examined in this suspenseful novel, written by a master of the genre.

LaPierre goes well beyond the bounds of the traditional mystery, examining one of today’s most compelling issues…
quirky and likeable characters, well drawn setting, and baffling plot…
excellent series. Marcia Muller, Vanishing Point

Another terrific Port Silva mystery, with a trademark intricate plot, fascinating characters, and above all, marvelous prose. She takes on complicated contemporary issues with aplomb. Ayelet Waldman, the Mommy Track mysteries

Run a Crooked Mile

Rosemary Mendes, looking for a new life after her husband’s death, believes she has found a refuge in California’s remote Trinity Alps. She’s not looking for Eden, just a place where she can live alone and not bother or be bothered by anyone. Contrary to her intentions, she is drawn into the life of the small community. And she has a growing sense of identification with another newcomer whom she never met, a young woman found shot dead in the forest, whose dog she adopts. Like Rosemary, the mystery woman came there to live a self sufficient life but women who don’t conform to familial and societal expectations can expect to be bothered…
and more. Rosemary’s efforts to learn more about ‘Wandering Girl’ the murdered woman’s e mail alias prove both successful and dangerous.