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Jon Talton

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.

Mapstone knows he can count on his wife Lindsey, one of the top "good hackers" in law enforcement. But what if they've both been betrayed? Mapstone is tested further when the new sheriff wants him back as a deputy, putting to use his historian's expertise to solve a very special cold case. The stakes turn deadly when David and Lindsey are stalked by a trained killer whose specialty is "suiciding" her targets.

In depressed, post-recession Phoenix, every certainty has become scrambled, from the short hustle of the powerful real-estate industry to the loyalties Mapstone once took for granted. Could Peralta really be a jewel thief or worse? The deeper Mapstone digs into the world of sun-baked hustlers, corrupt cops, moneyed retirees, and mobsters, the more things are not what they seem. Ultimately, Mapstone must risk everything to find the truth.

High Country Nocturne is an ambitious, searing, and gritty novel, with a fast-paced story as hard-edged as the stolen diamonds themselves.

Poisoned Pen Press

David Mapstone Mysteries

High Country Nocturne

The past never rests easy in Arizona.

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 there more to the story of Charles Page's assassination? More than three low-level players? Did a kingpin order the hit and get away with it? And what was the real motive? Despite the work of teams of journalists and law and legal professionals, no one yet knows why.

It's a case custom-made for David Mapstone, the historian-turned-sheriff's deputy. And suddenly Mapstone's boss, newly re-elected Sheriff Mike Peralta, promises to reopen the investigation into the only murder of an American journalist, in the US, in modern times. Why?

The promise triggers new murders. The crimes are reenactments of Phoenix's mob-riddled past, where gangsters rubbed elbows with the city's elite amid crosscurrents of corrupt cops, political payoffs, gambling, prostitution, and murder, all shielded by the sunshine image of a resort city. But who is committing them? A former soldier who is an explosives expert and deadly with a knife? A woman with screen-siren looks and extraordinary computer skills? Or someone out of Phoenix's seamy, swinging Seventies with secrets to keep, even though the major power brokers are dead?

Mapstone will need all the help he can get. He enlists a PhD candidate and Black Lives Matter activist to help him comb through sealed archives of the original bombing. Mapstone's wife, Lindsey, a top hacker, rejoins the Sheriff's Office and plays a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with the perp or perps—one that goes from the digital to the real and risky world. Somewhere in the house of mirrors surrounding the Page case they must find the key that connects the past to the present.

In this swiftly paced, compelling new novel by journalist Jon Talton, the ninth in the David Mapstone series, a big city is trying to keep its darkest history off-limits.

The Bomb Shelter

The private-detective business starts out badly for former Phoenix Deputy David Mapstone and his old friend Sheriff Mike Peralta. They are investigating a suspicious death involving 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 doesn't buy it. He's her brother. Or is he? Shortly after hiring the team, he is gunned down, and police find multiple driver's licenses. His real identity is a mystery.

In San Diego, David finds the woman's boyfriend, who is trying to care for their baby. He, too, hires the pair to solve Grace's death. Their work reveals that this was no suicide, and Grace proves to be only the first victim of a murderous spree that reaches into the world of high-priced call girls, their millionaire clients, the white-supremacist movement, and a high-stakes kidnapping.

Neither the lovely beaches of San Diego nor the enchanting desert of Arizona can conceal the brutal danger that lies beneath. Solving the case will require all of Mapstone's and Peralta's skills, and even these might not be enough to stop killers who are matching them step for step and planning far more deadly attacks.

The Night Detectives

"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 one of the largest urban counties in the United States, but we kept our Old West traditions...."

Historian-turned-deputy-sheriff David Mapstone returns in this exciting sequel to Jon Talton's Concrete Desert. When his friend Peralta, newly sworn in as sheriff, is shot by a sniper, "History Shamus" Mapstone can't keep a cool, academic distance. And he'd better not: while Peralta lies comatose in the hospital, the powers-that-be appoint Mapstone acting Sheriff in his place. Mapstone feels unqualified, but he's the only person who's temporary appointment won't infuriate all the other candidates who want the Sheriff's position permanently. Meanwhile, a cryptic note scrawled by Peralta before the shooting forces Mapstone to confront his own personal history, which has drawn him unwittingly into danger. As Mapstone discovers, the past has deadly consequences. The mean streets of the New West have never been more sinister.

Jim Meskimen

Blackstone Publishing

Camelback Falls

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 and the new millennium are only weeks away. But history professor David Mapstone, just hired by the Sheriff's Office, still finds trouble, chasing a robber into an abandoned warehouse and discovering a gruesome crime from six decades ago.

Mapstone begins an investigation into a Depression-era kidnapping that transfixed Arizona and the nation: the disappearance of a cattle baron's grandsons, their bodies never found. And although the kidnapper was caught and executed, Mapstone uncovers evidence that justice was far from done. But this is no history lesson. The cattle baron's heirs now run a Fortune 500 company and wield far more clout than a former-professor-turned-deputy. Then one of the heirs turns up dead....

Cactus Heart

Diamonds, greed, corrupt cops, mobsters—David Mapstone is about to be tested like never before.

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.

Mapstone knows he can count on his wife, Lindsey, one of the top “good hackers” in law enforcement. But what if they’ve both been betrayed? Mapstone is tested further when the new sheriff wants him back as a deputy, putting to use his historian’s expertise to solve a very special cold case. The stakes turn deadly when David and Lindsey are stalked by a trained killer whose specialty is “suiciding” her targets.

In depressed, postrecession Phoenix, every certainty has become scrambled, from the short hustle of the powerful real-estate industry to the loyalties Mapstone once took for granted. Could Peralta really be a jewel thief … or worse? The deeper Mapstone digs into the world of sunbaked hustlers, corrupt cops, moneyed retirees, and mobsters, the more things are not what they seem. Ultimately, Mapstone must risk everything to find the truth.

High Country Nocturne is an ambitious, searing, and gritty novel, with a fast-paced story as hard-edged as the stolen diamonds themselves.