Just as young journalist Lark Chadwick is about to begin her new job on the cops and courts beat, she discovers the body of a strangled girl - the first victim of a serial killer. Lark's got the inside track, but there are complications: jealous rivals in the newsroom, her job in danger, a hunky colleague who becomes a suspect, a superstar athlete with anger issues. And just who is that mysterious bag boy at the local market? With the help of her friend and mentor Lionel Stone, Lark's nerve i...

Orphaned as an infant, sexually assaulted as a naïve college student, strong-willed, impulsive Lark Chadwick is vexed and trying to figure out what to do with her mixed-up life. When she discovers the body of the aunt who raised her, Lark goes on a search for answers.She is stunned to learn from a 25-year-old newspaper clipping that she’s the “miracle baby” who survived a suspicious car accident that killed her parents at a rural railroad crossing in southern Wisconsin. Lark convin...

Enemies Domestic, Book Six in the Lark Chadwick Mystery series: On her first day as White House Press Secretary, Lark Chadwick is confronted on live television by a reporter with an agenda: “Are you, or are you not, planning to abort your unborn child?” His question puts Lark in the crosshairs of extremists on both sides of the highly fraught abortion issue. Ambivalent about becoming a single mother in the post-Roe era, and grieving the death of her boyfriend, Lark is now forced to make he...

When popular First Lady Rose Gannon dies suddenly (and mysteriously) during an interview with White House correspondent Lark Chadwick, Lark is thrust into the midst of a media-bashing frenzy. Lark, still reeling from the death of her photographer boyfriend, finds herself covering a grieving president struggling with his pain while trying to defuse a looming nuclear war. In the era of fake news, when all facts are suspect (and reporters are targets), Lark tries to discover the truth whi...

Long-time CNN journalist John DeDakis is back with his third mystery novel featuring young, feisty reporter Lark Chadwick. Just as Lark is about to begin her new job on the cops and courts beat, she discovers the body of a strangled girl - the first victim of a serial killer. Lark has the inside track, but there are complications: jealous rivals in the newsroom, her job in danger, a hunky colleague who becomes a suspect, a superstar athlete with anger issues. And just who is that mysteriou...

Lark Chadwick is back. The scrappy reporter for The Pine Bluff Standard is embroiled in another tale of intrigue.WHILE DOING BATTLE WITH an unscrupulous real estate mogul—and against the advice of her friend and mentor Lionel Stone—Lark impulsively flirts with diverting her career into broadcast journalism. But, as Lark quickly learns, the line between being famous and notorious is a thin one.In Bluff, book two in the Lark Chadwick mystery series, award-winning author and f...

Gutsy reporter, Lark Chadwick once again finds herself at the wrong place at the right time: front-row center when the White House press briefing room is suddenly attacked. The president is missing, the first lady's life is at risk, and Lark's personal life is falling apart when the man she loves disappears. In this story, author John DeDakis draws on his own personal pain the sudden death of his twenty-two year-old son Stephen in what promises to be a true page-turner. DeDakis also draws on ...