Hidden in the Blood: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 5)
By the end of the last novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club, "The Hero Next Time," Al Mackenzie, husband of Rachel, adoptive father to Logan and Emma, was still in a coma after a terrible car accident. This fifth novel in the series opens with a subdued LSDC, three of whose members are injured or out of commission, all of them hoping Al will wake up.
Unbeknownst to them, Al isn't just lying there; he's gaining a few insights of his own with the help of a couple of guides, one of whom happens to be the ghost of the man he thought was his father. By the time he wakes, he'll know his real father is alive and still out there, and there's a whole family of half-siblings he'll need to reconnect with.
Into this battered and bruised group comes a blast from Al's past: Agnes, a former girlfriend, on the run and far from home, with two kids in tow. Her husband's a cop, and he may have committed a murder, and he's just transferred to the Langley detachment of the RCMP, where Sergeant Joanie Mara, reeling from a betrayal from Joe, is immediately attracted to him, unaware of his past. Joanie, who's always played a supporting role with the LSDC, shines in this first novel to feature her narrative as she takes on the role of media relations officer, outwits a stalker, and inevitably finds herself ensnared in a revenge plot stretching hundreds of miles back to a family used to getting what it wants and willing to kill to get it.
If Joanie is to survive, she'll need the help of everyone in the LSDC, even if they're not at their best: Joe, her former lover; Lauren, Joe's wife and a private investigator who first discovered the plot; Rachel, the woman behind Joe's betrayal; Sunny, a family lawyer who helps Agnes free herself from her marriage; Tej, Sunny's wife and a real estate agent, who has her own first-time narrative in this book; and finally, Al, whose new family connections bring him and Agnes back to the place from where Agnes fled, and into the lion's den.
