Steve Martinez Mystery
4 primary works • 6 total works
Book 1
Book 2
In Porcupine County there lies a small Michigan town where the people all know one another and gossip cannot be silenced for long. But there's one secret that someone has tried to keep quiet for years...and those who try to uncover it seem to wind up dead. Deputy Steve Martinez lost his heart to the region after running away from a secret of his own. The peace and quiet is broken when a mob hit man's corpse washes up on the shore of Lake Superior. Then, during a routine police operation, one of Steve's colleagues falls over the long-buried body of one of Porcupine County's missing persons - a man who had been last seen alive almost a century before. The two deaths are seemingly unrelated...at first. Steve's investigations lead him through shootouts and hair-raising fights in a small plane. He is willing to do whatever it takes to keep the peace in the land he loves, but he destined to discover that some things are better left buried.
Book 3
Book 4
"Why kill a human being with an antique muzzle-loader? Each year in the entire country, only a handful of people die that way, and half the deaths are self-inflicted. In either case, loading and firing a flintlock or cap-and-ball weapon takes way too much time, fuss, and expertise. A pretty young teacher is killed by a ball from a Revolutionary War-era musket during an encampment of historical reenactors on a river in Porcupine County. Sheriff Steve Martinez-- Lakota by birth, white by upbringing-- is troubled by the victim's role-playing 'persona' as a camp-following frontier prostitute. Several other reenactors had been her customers, and sex often is a motive for murder. All the same, there is no evidence of foul play, forensic or otherwise, and the death is ruled an accident. The next few months, however, bring a surprising number of seemingly unrelated muzzle-loading deaths in the Upper Midwest. A statistical anomaly-- or something worse? Steve is suspicious. To find the answer and to keep the peace in Porcupine County, the sheriff must battle skeptics, a lack of forensic evidence, an ever-shrinking departmental budget, and a suddenly rocky romance with his longtime love, a beautiful redhead named Ginny Fitzgerald. Hot on the trail in the deep woods, Steve suddenly discovers that he is his quarry's newest target"--Author's web page.
When the remains of three little girls turn up inside railroad hopper cars, Sheriff Steve Martinez faces a troublesome case, for the cars had sat for years on a siding deep inside his beloved Porcupine County. After Steve and his comrades do the spadework, the FBI moves in, thinking their Unsub is both rapist and murderer. But Steve believes the killer--or killers--instead hired someone to dispose of the bodies. With the help of lawmen of all kinds, including the Ontario Provincial Police, and even Detroit mobsters, Steve doggedly tracks "the Beast." This intricate police procedural, set in the wilds of Upper Michigan, features not only an exciting high-tech chase around Lake Superior but also the revival of a clever World War II deception.