A hilarious, fantastical, middle-grade novel full of magic, hijinks, gangsters and a talking dog! Welcome to the world of Nicholas Quick! Full of guffaws, this book will get you rooting for the most unlikely team of magicians since Harry Potter.

When twelve-year-old boy Nicholas Quick and his parents try to run from gangsters, Nicholas is shocked to find himself left behind when their car just disappears. The last thing his parents tell him to do is to run, so he does…and is pursued by a pair of magical gangsters.

In his efforts to evade capture, Nicholas encounters Max, a private magical investigator who has lost his powers. Max agrees to help Nicholas and they embark on a non-stop, comedic adventure. This is the first of a series featuring Nicholas Quick and magical P.I. Max, as they work to stop the villainous Mr. Blackwell from destroying the world.

H.L. Romquist began his career as a cake wrestler and briefly rose to fame in 1986 when he defeated a seventeen-layer wedding cake with pink frosting to secure the cake wrestling open championship title of Dorsetshire. Unfortunately, he sustained a career-ending injury the following year when a pineapple upside-down cake stood him on his head, and he was forced to retire from the cake wrestling circuit permanently and sell magical oils for a living. All too predictably, the magical oil bubble burst in 1999, and he had to pick up whatever work he could find. He took a position not answering phones as a customer service representative, he had an abortive little career selling insurance, he started a construction company that fabricated buildings primarily out of crackers, and he even got himself elected as a backbench politician until he was forced to resign in disgrace after a much-publicized tofu incident. Mr. Romquist now writes stories for children, and he earnestly hopes that his writing reflects the dignity of the insurance salesman, the principles of the career politician, and the syntax of the professional cake wrestler.