Paradise Cafe

2 primary works • 3 total works

Heat Wave

by Maureen Jennings

Published 30 March 2019

It's July 1936 and Toronto is under a record-breaking heat wave. Charlotte Frayne is the junior associate in a two-person private investigation firm, owned by T. Gilmore. Two events set the book’s plot in motion: an anti-Semitic hate letter is delivered to Gilmore, who up to now has not acknowledged his religion, and Hilliard Taylor, a veteran of the First World War requests the firm’s assistance in uncovering what he believes is systematic embezzlement of the Paradise Café, which he owns and operates with three other men, all of whom were prisoners of war. The two events, although seemingly completely unrelated, come together in this wonderful novel that brings to life characters who are as real to the reader as those of the Murdoch series.

November Rain

by Maureen Jennings

Published 6 November 2020

March Roars

by Maureen Jennings

Published 21 September 2024

March roars in and Charlotte Frayne, P.I., receives a letter requesting her services to prevent “a grave miscarriage of justice.”

The sender, Miss Olivia Brodie, is an elderly resident in the Toronto House of Industry (the Poor House) who claims she witnessed two men on a nearby street, behaving in a suspicious manner. After learning that two Black teenagers have been charged with burglary on that same street, she is convinced the men she saw are the true culprits.

Separately, Charlotte is hired by a Mrs. Emmeline Larkin, a woman from the opposite end of society’s hierarchy, who says she is missing some precious jewelry. She fears the thief may be a member of her own social circle, possibly from the influential women’s club to which she belongs.

Investigating what seems at first like disparate cases takes Charlotte back to events from Toronto’s history, and she discovers a time when there was, indeed, grave injustice.