DJ jets across the Atlantic to England to follow a series of obscure clues and symbols he hopes will reveal the truth about his grandfather. In London, he stays with Doris, the elderly woman he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with. Laid up with a broken ankle, Doris has her grandchild, Charlie, offer assistance. Charlie—short for Charlotte—is a beautiful model who is romantically (and secretly) linked to a member of the British Royal Family. Spies, guns, double agents, the Cambridge Five and a vintage E-Type Jag are a few of the things DJ and Charlie encounter on an adventure that makes climbing Kilimanjaro look like a walk in the park.
Steve thinks he made the right choice turning down a snowy week with his cousins at a cabin in northern Ontario in favor of a relaxing (and perhaps romantic) time under the Spanish sun with his friend, Laia. But when an email from his brother DJ arrives, implicating their grandfather in some shadowy international plots involving nuclear bombs, Steve and Laia immediately put aside all thoughts of a lazy, sun-drenched vacation. In a desperate attempt to find out if Steve’s grandfather was a Cold War-era spy, they crack mysterious codes, confront violent Russian mobsters, dodge spies, unearth a bomb and avoid nudists. But the more they uncover, the more Steve wonders: whose side was Grandpa really on?
When his brother Bunny vanishes from the Toronto City Hall skating rink, Spencer, a budding filmmaker, finds himself plunged into the stuff of movie thrillers: kidnapping, terrorists, intrigue, a missing document, a world-famous pop star, disguises, romance and a rogue alligator. As he races the clock to save his brother, he must sort the real from the make-believe and unravel a murder mystery involving his grandfather. The last time Spencer got tangled up in an adventure from his grandfather’s past, he didn’t believe it was for real. Now he can’t get anyone to believe him when he says that Bunny has been kidnapped and that someone is going to die.