Steven Havill

"Former Posadas County Sheriff Bill Gastner, now a New Mexico Livestock Inspector, is enjoying a day on Herb Torrance's ranch--soaking in the sun as he counts a small herd of cattle and thinking about an upcoming lunch with an old friend back in town. But a light breeze stirs dust, a horse spooks, and Bil finds himself ferrying a broken cowpuncher in the back of his SUV, headed out to meet an ambulance. Moments later, Bill's day goes from bad to...

The 22nd Posadas County Mystery, is a prequel to the prequel of the series, One Perfect Shot. It explores the younger Gastner, introduces Sheriff Eduardo Salcido, and traces the development of series stalwarts. When the first Posadas County mystery, Heartshot, published in 1991, Bill Gastner was the county Undersheriff. Over time Bill became Sheriff, then retired, and Robert Torrez took over the top spot. But what were Torrez's first days as a rookie...

The Posadas High School girls' volleyball team is on a hot winning streak, exciting everyone. But then the coach, Clint Scott, is found gunned down in the girls' shower room, the victim of four bullets, one fired nearly point blank into his heart. Dead for hours, he was killed soon after the end of last night's game. And, last night, a homegrown Banksy tagged several sites in town before he apparently began work on a section of wall outside the girls'...

What do you do when you inherit $330 million after taxes? If you're New Mexico rancher Miles Waddell, you build NightZone, an astronomy-based theme park. Waddell's dream begins to sour when two eco-terrorists make an opening statement by chain-sawing power lines that feed the development. One of the terrorists is killed by a bucking power pole. When fleeing conspirator is stopped by a cop and guns the lawman down, retired Posadas Sheriff Gastner becomes...

"A Posadas County Sheriff's Department Dispatcher sticks a Post-It note on an incident report. What he meant to write was, "Not for news," hoping that the newspaper reporter who drops into the Sheriff's Office each morning would ignore the report. But what he unintentionally wrote was, "Note for news," and so the arrest of Quentin Torrez, nephew of Posadas Sheriff Robert Torrez, goes public. And Quentin, who has applied for a job with the NightZone...

When cats start getting sick, feline-loving freelance writer Theda Krakow suspects an accident is to blame. But her shelter-owning rocker buddy Violet claims the contaminated kibble was poisoned. When Theda starts looking at shelter politics, she finds a litter of suspects. The city shelter may be backing down from a healthy pet initiative, and a series of threatening letters suggests a darker motive. Old-fashioned jealousy may factor in as well....

A well seasoned sixty-nine, Sheriff Bill Gastner knows his Posadas, New Mexico, territory as well as he understands the foibles of the human condition. So when a backhoe crushes a man to death, it's more instinct than fact that leaves him feeling there's more to this "accident" than meets the eye. Adding to his problems, anonymous letters charging his best deputy, Tom Pasquale, with hustling Mexican nationals for cash are being dispatched around town....

Second book in the Posadas County Mystery Series "Havill delivers an evocative tale of hard lives on the edge of society. His portly detective is a genuine low-key pleasure."-Publishers Weekly When Undersheriff Bill Gastner heads to New Mexico's mountains for some respite, the last thing he expects to find is a dead body. But he's a cop through-and-through, and he can't let a criminal walk… Aging Posadas County Undersheriff Bill Gastner has weathered...