David Mapstone Mystery
3 primary works • 7 total works
Book 2
Book 7
Book 7
A former student turns up in David Mapstone's office with 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 city of newcomers seeking fresh starts from sometimes dark pasts. There's a corpse in the desert, right where the letter said it would be found, but it's only weeks old. The burial site turns out to have bodyguards and when the 'former student' can't be found, Mapstone begins to wonder what her agenda is. As more fresh bodies turn up, the clues keep pointing back to the same remote piece of desert and a seemingly unconnected real estate development called Arizona Dreams...
A handsome young New York professor comes to Phoenix to research his new book. But when he's brutally murdered, police connect him to one of the world's most deadly drug cartels. This shouldn't be a case for historian - turned - deputy David Mapstone - except the victim has been dating David's sister - in - law Robin and now she's a target, too. David's wife Lindsey is in Washington with an elite anti - cyber terror unit and she makes one demand of him: protect Robin. This won't be an easy job with the city police suspicious of Robin and trying to pressure her. With the sheriff's office in turmoil, David is even more of an outsider. And the gangsters are able to outgun and outspend law enforcement. It doesn't help that David and Lindsey's long - distance marriage is under strain. But the danger is real and growing. To save Robin, David must leave his stack of historic crimes and plunge into the savage today world of smuggling - people, drugs, and guns - in Phoenix. Arizona's "History Shamus" returns in "South Phoenix Rules." It's the most gripping and personal David Mapstone Mystery yet.
In 1999 Phoenix, it's the sweet season. 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 that is six decades old. 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...
At loose ends, David Mapstone gets an assignment from a friend in the sheriff's office - go through the old "unsolved" files and clear them out one way or another. David doesn't expect to find any connection to the present or anything personal in any of these ancient cases. But when an old girlfriend turns up at his door asking him to help find her missing sister and the sister is later found murdered. David is atonished to see that her killing so closely parallels a 40-year-old case that it cannot be a coincidence.