Jon Talton
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"Phoenix, 1933: A young city with big dreams and dark corners Great War veteran and rising star Gene Hammons lost his job as a homicide detective when he tried to prove that a woman was wrongly convicted of murder to protect a well-connected man. Now a private investigator, Hammons makes his living looking for missing persons-a plentiful caseload during the Great Depression, when people seem to disappear all the time. But his routine is disrupted...
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"In the quiet of my forgotten office in the old country courthouse, behind the plastic doorplate that reads 'Deputy David Mapstone, Sheriff's Office Historian', I fiddled with the tribal fashion of cops. The tan uniform blouse with epaulets and pocket flaps, the opening above the pocket made for a cheap Cross pen, and the gold-plated 'MCSO' letters running parallel on each side of the collars. An off-white felt Stetson sat on my desk. We might be...
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PW Pick 2013
"Australian author Greenwood, having made a name for herself with the lighthearted Phryne Fisher series, succeeds brilliantly with this gripping thriller set in ancient Egypt." -Publishers Weekly STARRED review
Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt is peaceful and prosperous under the dual rule of the Pharaohs Amenhotep III and IV, until the younger Pharaoh begins to dream new and terrifying dreams.
Ptah-hotep, a young peasant boy studying to be...
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The private-detective business starts out badly for former Phoenix Deputy David Mapstone and his old friend Sheriff Mike Peralta. Mapstone and Peralta are hired to investigate the suspicious death of a young Arizona woman who fell from a condo tower in San Diego. The police call Grace Hunter's death a suicide, but the client, who is shot after hiring them and is found with multiple driver's licenses, doesn't agree. In San Diego, Mapstone finds Grace's...
5) Deadline man
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He's a man whose life is so intertwined with his job that we know him only as the columnist. He writes for a newspaper in Seattle, isn't afraid to stir up trouble and keeps his life - including his multiple lovers and his past - in safe compartments. It's all about to be violently upended when he goes out on what seems like the most mundane of assignments, looking into a staid company that never makes news. But from the moment one of his sources takes...
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"A cache of diamonds is stolen in Phoenix. The prime suspect is former Maricopa County sheriff Mike Peralta, now a private investigator. Disappearing into Arizona's mountainous high country, Peralta leaves his business partner and longtime friend David Mapstone with a stark choice: he can cooperate with the FBI, or strike out on his own to find Peralta and what really happened."--
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Cincinnati homicide Detective Will Borders now walks with a cane and lives alone with constant discomfort. He's lucky to be alive. He's lucky to have a job, as public information officer for the department. But when a star cop is brutally murdered, he's assigned to find her killer. The crime bears a chilling similarity to killings on the peaceful college campus nearby, where his friend Cheryl Beth Wilson is teaching nursing. The two young victims...
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"1936 Phoenix: Business has never been better for private investigator Gene Hammons in this young city of big ambitions and even bigger corruption. But when smuggled gold, kidnapping, blackmail, and a brutal murder intrude upon "Happy Days are Here Again," Hammons is drawn into a race to find answers before a killer claims another victim. It won't be easy. A crime syndicate, J. Edgar Hoover, a wealthy family from back East, a wily stalker, and his...
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A handsome young New York professor comes to Phoenix to research his new book. But when he's brutally murdered, police connect him to one of the world's most deadly drug cartels. This shouldn't be a case for historian-turned-deputy David Mapstone-except the victim has been dating David's sister-in-law Robin and now she's a target, too. David's wife Lindsey is in Washington with an elite anti-cyber terror unit and she makes one demand of him: protect...
10) Arizona dreams
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When a former student turns up in David Mapstone's office, she seems to have the perfect case for this history-professor-turned-deputy: a letter left by her deceased father, confessing to a forty-year-old murder and providing directions to the body. But things are never what they seem in Phoenix, a fast-buck city of newcomers seeking fresh starts from sometimes dark pasts.
Just ask David's wife, Deputy Lindsey Faith Mapstone. One morning the start...
11) Concrete desert
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"Talton's summer mystery, a first novel, shows how fertile the desert can be as a mystery setting... A stunning debut." -Booklist STARRED review
Having recently lost his job as a history professor, David Mapstone returns to his boyhood home of Phoenix, Arizona, to find the city dramatically changed. It's now a haven for wealthy retirees and a seasonal retreat for West Coast "sophisticates," but pockets of his earlier life-some welcome, some not-remain....
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"Ramsay skillfully blends wry humor, witty dialogue, and engaging characters with a dark plot that tackles some of society's most unsolvable and tragic faults."-Kings River Life Magazine
Ethyl Smut, everyone agreed, deserved to die. But even a life wasted deserves justice. When a second body is unearthed in Ethyl's shallow grave and the nightmarish George LeBrun finds his way to Ike's desk, things get messy fast.
Then there is Ethyl's missing daughter,...
13) Cactus heart
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In this "prequel" to the popular David Mapstone mysteries, author Jon Talton takes us back to 1999, when everything dot-com was making money, the Y2K bug was the greatest danger facing the world, and the good times seemed as if they would never end.
It was a time before David and Lindsey were together, before Mike Peralta was sheriff, and before David had rid himself of the sexy and mysterious Gretchen.
In Phoenix, it's the sweet season and Christmas...
14) The bomb shelter
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"Forty years ago, a Phoenix reporter was killed by a car bomb in one of America's most notorious crimes. Three men went to prison but was the assassination ever really solved? Did the kingpin who ordered the hit get away with it? It's a case custom-made for David Mapstone, the historian-turned-sheriff's deputy. But the past never rests easy in Arizona and when Mapstone's boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta, promises to reopen the investigation, new murders...
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Though the new metropolis is one of America's largest, many are unaware of Phoenix's rich and compelling history. Built on land once occupied by the most advanced pre-Columbian irrigation society, Phoenix overcame its hostile desert surroundings to become a thriving agricultural center. After World War II, its population exploded with the mid-century mass migration to the Sun Belt. In times of rapid expansion or decline, Phoenicians proved themselves...