Jon Talton

It's 1936, and private investigator Gene Hammons has more work than he can handle. A crime syndicate, J. Edgar Hoover, a wealthy family from back East, and a wily stalker all want something from him. His capable-but-drug-addicted brother, still a homicide detective, is as much a hindrance as a...

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...

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...

Cincinnati homicide detective Will Borders now walks with a cane and lives alone in constant discomfort. He’s lucky to be alive. He’s lucky to have his job as public information officer for the department. But when a star cop is brutally murdered, Borders is assigned to find her killer. The...

When his friend Peralta, newly sworn in as sheriff, is shot by a sniper, David Mapstone, former historian and new deputy sheriff, can’t keep a cool, academic distance - and he’d better not. While Peralta lies comatose in the hospital, the powers that be install Mapstone as acting sheriff in...

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 had been dating...

He’s a man whose life is so intertwined with his job that we know him 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...

The private detective business starts out badly for former Phoenix deputy David Mapstone, who has teamed up with his old friend and boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta. Their first client is gunned down just after hiring them. The case involved the suspicious death of a young Arizona woman who fell from...

Cheryl Beth Wilson, a nurse at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital, finds a doctor brutally murdered in a secluded office. Wilson had been having an affair with the doctor's husband, a surgeon, and now she is a "person of interest" if not an outright suspect. But someone other than the police is also...