The Night Detectives (21 page)

About this Book

The desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, has its secrets and its not about to give them up easily. Ex-cop Mike Peralta and ex-cold case expert David Mapstone have formed a detective agency to unearth them. And it's started badly...

Moments after hiring them, their first client is gunned down. And the deaths don't stop there. Someone is killing their clients, killing everyone connected with their cases, and is now coming for them. Why? The answer will lead Mapstone and Peralta into the world of human trafficking, corrupt politics, and the white supremacist movement.

Reviews

“A great read!”
Michael Connelly

“A strong new voice in contemporary hard-boiled fiction.”
Washington Post

“Talton has created a richly complex character in Mapstone... a well-crafted, nuanced series.”
Booklist

“A haunting noir story vividly rendered by Talton's white-hot prose... original... impressively unyielding.”
New York Journal of Books

“Talton crisply evokes Phoenix's New West ambience and keeps readers guessing with unexpected plot twists.”
Publishers Weekly

About this Series

PHOENIX COLD CASES

David Mapstone: ex-cop, ex-history professor.

As a cop, Mapstone learned never to trust anyone. As a historian, he learned that the past is never past and everything is connected.

Now he's digging into Phoenix, Arizona's secrets. Buried secrets that the city is not about to give up easily.

Just as well he's armed with a .357 magnum Colt Python

1.
Concrete Desert
A young woman's body is found dumped in the desert in circumstances identical to those of an infamous 40-year-old unsolved murder.

Concrete Desert
is available
here
.

2.
Cactus Heart
Mapstone unearths the skeletons of a pair of four-year-old twins, the victims in a notorious Depression-era kidnapping case. But what should be a matter of tying up loose ends quickly becomes something more sinister, more personal… and more deadly.

Cactus Heart
is available
here
.

3.
Camelback Falls
When Sheriff Peralta is shot by a sniper, Mapstone must confront his own past and the deadly consequences of a small-town shoot-out in 1979 that left Peralta and Mapstone standing over four dead bodies.

Camelback Falls
is available
here
.

4.
Dry Heat
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 trail leads Mapstone into the Arizonan desert, and eventually to San Francisco, as he slowly uncovers the bloody secrets surrounding the FBI badge.

Dry Heat
is available
here
.

5.
Arizona Dreams
Mapstone receives a letter confessing to a forty-year-old murder and providing directions to the body. But things are never what they seem in Phoenix. There's a body right where the letter said it would be – but it's only weeks old, not years...

Arizona Dreams
is available
here
.

6.
South Phoenix Rules
Phoenix, Arizona in August. It's 114 degrees in the shade but it's going to get even hotter for cold case investigator David Mapstone when he starts investigating a drug cartel execution.

South Phoenix Rules
is available
here
.

7.
The Night Detectives
Mapstone and Peralta are Phoenix's newest private detective agency. But someone is killing their clients, killing everyone connected with their cases, and is now coming for them. Why?

The Night Detectives
is available
here
.

About the Author

JON TALTON is a fourth-generation Arizonan who grew up in the same Phoenix neighbourhood that David Mapstone calls home. A journalist of more than twenty years, he now lives in Washington state where he is the economics columnist for the
Seattle Times
and writes the
Rogue Columnist
blog.

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