Diane Garrett, Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES — "The Carpool Detectives," a true crime mystery that reads like a novel, begins in the liminal moment before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the country and concludes on an upbeat note two and a half years later: Four L.A. moms with no law enforcement training have solved an icy cold case and moved on to their next, buoyed by newfound purpose.

But as Chuck Hogan's book and conversations with the unlikely crime solvers today make clear, there were plenty of bumps along the way — from dead ends to a potential intruder at one of their homes mid-investigation.

"We went through phases where we felt like we hit a wall," says Marissa Pianko, a former forensic accountant. Pianko first learned about the stalled investigation into an older couple's de

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