High Country Nocturne
Jon Talton
Poisoned Pen Press, Jun 2 2015, $24.95
ISBN: 9781464203985
Phoenix police consider former Maricopa County
Sheriff turned private investigator Mike Peralta as the suspect in a diamond
heist in which a video shows him shooting a guard and stealing the million
dollar loot at Chandler Fashion Center.
His partner David Mapstone is in denial as he rejects the concept of
Peralta being a thief. The fallout of
Peralta’s betrayal includes FBI SAC Pham exiled to Anchorage while replaced by
Mann who distrusts uncooperative Dave as being in cahoots with the missing
culprit. Mann interrogates Dave and
Peralta’s wife Sharon by her husband’s abandoned truck. In spite of the evidence, Mapstone insists
Peralta did not do it as he only wounded the guard instead of killing him.
As the Peralta case turns Twitter viral, trusting
no one except his spouse Lindsey, Mapstone applies his historian background and
his wife’s computer skills to investigate.
At the same time Maricopa County Sheriff Melton who replaced Peralta
after an ugly election asks David to use his historian skills to work a cold
case. Meanwhile, a killer whom David may
have met just before his encounter with Mann, targets the Mapstone couple with Lindsey
taking a bullet.
The eighth David Mapstone Arizona mystery (see
The Night Detectives and South Phoenix Rules) is a sensational twisting noir,
perhaps the best in this series as the hero lands in one dangerous mess after
another. Confused Mapstone struggles
between his loyalty to his best friend and the visual proof of his guilt; only
to have his emotions further nuked when a brilliant lunatic shoots his beloved
Sharon.
Harriet Klausner
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