Jon Talton

"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...

He's a man we know 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. But 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." The moment one of his sources takes a dive off a downtown skyscraper, the columnist is...

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...

"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,...