The Life of a Mystery Series

a new Wakeland novel in 2025

I just finished edits for The Last Exile, the fifth Wakeland novel. It should be out next spring.

Sunset and Jericho ends with Dave Wakeland at a crossroads. Walk away from the security business he founded and leave the city, or stay in Vancouver? If I never got to write another word about him, I felt it was a good spot to leave him.

But I didn’t want to leave him.

In trying to explain my intentions with the series, I keep thinking of this quote from the Albert Brooks documentary Defending My Life. “I had a very famous agent and he said to me, ‘I don’t know why you always take the hard road.’ And my answer was, ‘You think I see two roads.’”

A mystery series isn’t like a fantasy series or a prestige television show. It’s more like a basic cable procedural. Law and Order instead of Game of Thrones. Instead of “here’s another instalment in the ongoing adventures of our heroes,” it’s more like, “here is one of a cluster of stories which should be entertaining in its own right, and if you like it you’ll probably like the others.”

I’m simplifying, and editor Jim Thomsen would counter that a lot of current mysteries are simply checking in on old friends. But there’s a difference between a capitalizing on a huge hit with a number of sequels, and building a series that simultaneously creates buzz for new books and interest in the old ones.

Business-wise, most mystery series follow a pattern of success: the first book does well, the second tanks, the third does okay but maybe not as good as the first. And most series end there, if they make it to a third book at all.

That pattern has repeated in the careers of most authors I know. It’s maddening to get better as a writer with incommensurate returns for it. Many stop writing at that point.

Part of this is the publishing model, which invests as little as possible in a book, and next to nothing in an author’s longterm career. Part of it is marketing. A first novel in a series is new. A fifth or sixth is established. But the second, third, etc. are neither of these. They’re often the best, but nobody knows what to do with them.

If you can hold on, somehow, good things tend to happen. Ian Rankin’s Rebus series didn’t really become a bestselling phenomenon until Black and Blue, which was book eight.

The first two Wakeland novels, Invisible Dead and Cut You Down, came out before the pandemic, in 2016 and 2018 respectively. The third book, Hell and Gone, was published in the middle of the pandemic, in 2021. (If you can survive a Covid virtual book launch, you can get through anything).

Sunset and Jericho came out last year, and was the most successful by most measures. People had faith in the series. That’s a very heartening thing, because I love writing it. And I think they’re getting better.

Next year the fifth book in the series comes out. The Last Exile serves as a reintroduction to Dave Wakeland, and it’s his reintroduction to the city after being away. Here’s a description:

THE LAST EXILE

Dave Wakeland returns to the streets of Vancouver for his most dangerous case yet.

Maggie Zito is being held for murder. The volatile single mother is accused of killing the retired leader of the notorious Exiles motorcycle gang and his wife aboard their million-dollar houseboat. With a mystery witness putting Maggie at the scene, and the Exiles baying for her blood, it’s unlikely she’ll make it to the trial alive.

Desperate, Maggie’s lawyer Shuzhen Chen calls in a favor to Dave Wakeland: Find evidence of Maggie’s innocence and get her client out of custody.

Wakeland reluctantly returns to a changing city, full of unfamiliar dangers. To prove Maggie’s innocence, he and Shuzhen must reckon with the Exiles crime syndicate and their bloodthirsty leader, Terry Rhodes. The bikers are on the verge of a civil war, and an unseen foe is gunning for Rhodes’s top spot. To preserve Maggie’s life, Wakeland will have to strike a deal with Rhodes himself.

Every minute Maggie is in custody, she’s at the mercy of the Exiles. Dave and Shuzhen have to learn the identity of the witness, find out why Maggie was framed for this killing, who really accomplished it and why—all while dealing with their evolving romantic history.

To complicate matters, Wakeland’s business partner Jeff Chen, who’s also Shuzhen’s cousin, is nowhere to be found. The security business they started teeters on the verge of bankruptcy. Even if the case can be resolved, and the business saved, can the partners ever trust each other?

The Last Exile is a detective novel about home and exile, family and violence, love and revenge.

I recommend picking up Sunset and Jericho now, or you could start at the beginning with Invisible Dead.