Jon Talton
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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...
2) 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 handsome young New York professor visiting Phoenix to research his new book is brutally murdered. Historian-turned-sheriff's deputy David Mapstone should not be investigating Jax Delgado's death. But Jax has been dating David's sister-in-law Robin, and now she's someone's target, too. Robin's sister Lindsey, strangely distant while working with an anti-cyber terror unit in DC, makes one demand of husband David: protect Robin. This won't be an easy...
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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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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...
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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...
7) Dry heat
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Half a century after the unsolved murder of an FBI agent, the victim's missing badge is found on the body of a dead transient. The case seems a perfect fit for David Mapstone, history-professor-turned Maricopa-County-deputy-sheriff. That is, if he can get past a forced partnership with rival cold-case expert Sgt. Kate Vare and the FBI's strange stonewalling about the agent's killing.
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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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"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...
10) Powers of Arrest
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Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder
"Golden age fans will be enthralled." -Publishers Weekly STARRED review
'Adrian Gray was born in May 1862 and met his death through violence, at the hands of one of his own children, at Christmas, 1931.'
Thus begins a classic crime novel published in 1933 that has been too long neglected-until now. It is a riveting portrait of the psychology of a murderer.
Each December, Adrian Gray invites...
11) 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...
12) 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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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...
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"Talton shines in weaving together the mystery elements of the plots with historical events from the Prohibition period. Fast-paced, gritty, and exciting, this one will have fans of both Depression-era and southwestern-set crime fiction begging for more!"
-Booklist, Starred Review
A fresh take on classic noir, City of Dark Corners reveals the seedy underbelly of the budding city of Phoenix in the 1930s and the lengths one man will go to uphold justice...
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A sadistic killer is terrorizing Phoenix, and he's got Gene Hammons' number…
It's 1936, and private investigator Gene Hammons has more work than he can handle. A crime syndicate, J. Edgar Hoover, a wealthy family from back East, and a wily stalker all want something from him. His capable-but-drug-addicted brother, still a homicide detective, is as much a hindrance as a help. Luckily, Hammons finds a professional ally in Pamela Bradbury, a fellow...