The Night Detectives (David Mapstone Mysteries, 6) - Softcover

Talton, Jon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 146420134X ISBN 13: 9781464201349

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2013

Synopsis

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: A suspicious death investigation 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? After his murder, police find multiple driver’s licenses and his real identity is a mystery. To complicate things further, an Arizona state senator who was instrumental in Peralta’s recent election defeat owns the condo. In San Diego, David finds the woman’s boyfriend, who is trying to care for their baby and can’t believe Grace would kill herself. He, too, hires the pair to solve Grace’s death. But a darker story emerges. Grace was putting herself through college as a high-priced call girl, an escort for rich men who valued her looks and discretion. Before the day is out, the boyfriend is murdered and David barely escapes with his own life. Someone is killing their clients. And may be coming for them. Solving the case will take Mapstone and Peralta into the world of human trafficking, corrupt politics, and the white supremacist movement. Neither the lovely beaches of San Diego nor the enchanting desert of Arizona can conceal the brutal danger that lies beneath. They no longer have badges but they are still detectives. The night detectives.

About this title

About the Author:

Jon Talton is a fourth-generation Arizonan, the author of ten novels, and a former columnist for the Arizona Republic. Talton now lives in Seattle, where he is the economics columnist for the Seattle Times and writes the blog Rogue Columnist.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* There’s something unsettling about the man who hires the newly formed Phoenix PI firm of former sheriff Mike Peralta and his former deputy, historian David Mapstone. That feeling is confirmed when the client is shot point-blank as he drives away from the meeting. All of which intensifies the former lawmen’s interest in pursuing an investigation into the suspicious death (ruled a suicide) of Grace Hunter, who fell naked and handcuffed from the nineteenth-floor balcony of a San Diego condo. That Peralta and Mapstone are somehow intricately involved in this deadly situation from the start becomes increasingly apparent, as they search for who’s behind it and why, with the help of their previously estranged wives, both of whom return home. Yet as their private lives settle down, both Peralta and Mapstone face heightened danger from a terrifying and all-too-plausible enemy. (As a sidebar to his investigation, Mapstone contrasts soulless Phoenix, where the planners got it wrong, with charming San Diego, where they got it right.) Mapstone’s seventh outing (after South Phoenix Rules, 2010) features tight prose and plotting and a pair of complex and fallible protagonists whose character development continues in a series that just keeps getting better. --Michele Leber

About this edition

• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 146420134X
• ISBN 13: 9781464201349
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240