Chris Laing Books in Order

Nine stories follow children growing up in Hamilton, Ontario, during the Second World War. Suspected spies, summer camp mysteries and everyday childhood adventures bring together the excitement and uncertainty of coming of age in wartime.

Returning to Hamilton after the Second World War, injured veteran Max Dexter opens a detective agency. A wealthy client's missing-person case draws Max and assistant Isabel O'Brien into art theft, arson, money laundering, and murder.

When Max Dexter's artist friend Roger Bruce is arrested for killing a client, Max and Isabel O'Brien investigate in postwar Hamilton. Their search for the real murderer provokes local mobsters determined to discourage them.

Max Dexter's mother returns to Hamilton after abandoning him decades earlier. As he and Isabel O'Brien face a crime boss's revenge, her possible involvement in an escalating mob conflict makes their approaching Christmas in 1947 increasingly dangerous.

In 1948 Hamilton, Max Dexter and Isabel O'Brien search for Ida Lucas, a hotel hostess who has abandoned her young son. A simultaneous divorce investigation draws them into a businessman's secret life and the orbit of a new mob boss.