Jon Talton Books In Order

Concrete Desert

In this intriguing first novel, Jon Talton plunges his protagonist, David Mapstone, into a Sunbelt metropolis where corruption, betrayal and murder are lurking just beyond the glow of tony resorts and dramatic desert sunsets. Having recently lost his job as a history professor, Mapstone returns to his boyhood home of Phoenix, Arizona, but finds the Southwest city he knew dramatically changed. It’s now a haven for wealthy retirees and a seasonal retreat for West Coast ‘sophisticates.’ To Mapstone, who has a strong personal feeling for the area’s history, it seems a foreign place. There remain, however, pockets of his earlier life, some welcome, some not. Mapstone eagerly accepts a temporary job from his old friend and Maricopa County Chief Deputy Mike Peralta: Look into still open cases that have languished for years in the department’s file cabinets and see if he can close any. A less welcome voice from the past is the college sweetheart, who appears at his door one evening. True to his memory of her, she is there because she wants something. Never mind that she had abruptly abandoned him 20 years ago for a wealthier lover. Now her sister is missing. Will Mapstone look for her? Although Mapstone’s search for the missing woman is quickly resolved when her body is discovered in the desert, he is stunned to find an echo of the past in the grisly discovery. The dead sister has been found in circumstances identical to a sensational 40 year old unsolved murder he is researching for Peralta. Mapstone’s dogged investigation of both murders bridges the chasm of clashing cultures, meshing his own long ago memories and the stories from some of the city’s old inhabitants with the tangled doings of newcomers and their acolytes, young women eager to share the lifestyle of tainted wealth, drugs, and careless violence. To read Concrete Desert is to become completely engrossed in a highly unusual mystery that is further enriched by the author’s perspective on the way America is changing. AUTHORBIO: Jon Talton is a fourth generation Arizonan who grew up in the same Phoenix neighborhood David Mapstone calls home. He currently works as a columnist for The Arizona Republic.

Camelback Falls

”In the quiet of my forgotten office in the old country courthouse, behind the plastic doorplate that reads ‘Deputy David Mapstone, Sheriff’s Office Historian, ‘ I fiddled with the tribal fashion of cops. The tan uniform blouse with epaulets and pocket flaps, the opening above the pocket made for a cheap Cross pen, and the gold plated ‘MCSO’ letters running parallel on each side of the collars…
. An off white felt Stetson sat on my desk. We might be one of the largest urban counties in the United States, but we kept our Old West traditions…
.”Historian turned deputy sheriff David Mapstone returns in this exciting sequel to Jon Talton’s ‘Concrete Desert,’ When his friend Peralta, newly sworn in as sheriff, is shot by a sniper, ‘History Shamus’ Mapstone can’t keep a cool, academic distance. And he’d better not: while Peralta lies comatose in the hospital, the powers that be appoint Mapstone acting Sheriff in his place. Peralta feels unqualified, but he’s the only person who’s temporary appointment won’t infuriate all the other candidates who want the Sheriff’s position permanently. Meanwhile, a cryptic note scrawled by Peralta before the shooting forces Mapstone to confront his own personal history, which has drawn him unwittingly into danger. As Mapstone discovers, the past has deadly consequences. The mean streets of the New West have never been more sinister.

Dry Heat

The past is never past on the mean streets of Phoenix, especially when the mercury hits a hundred and it’s only April. Half a century after the unsolved murder of an FBI agent, the missing badge is found on the body of a dead transient. The case seems a perfect fit for David Mapstone, history professor turned Maricopa County deputy sheriff. That is, if he can get past a forced partnership with rival cold case expert Sgt. Kate Vare and the FBI’s strange stonewalling about the details of the agent’s killing. To complicate matters, there are the crimes making history today, like the arrest of Russian mafia members in a multimillion dollar fraud case. David’s wife, Lindsey, star of the sheriff’s Cybercrimes Bureau, was on the task force that busted the case wide open. But her triumph is short lived when a hit in Scottsdale leaves three task force members dead. Lindsey’s life in danger, Sheriff Peralta stashes Lindsey and David in a safe house. That doesn’t get the good ‘History Shamus’ off the hook, though, as Sheriff Peralta inexplicably demands that David solve the cold case. The trail will take Mapstone to the most forlorn parts of Phoenix, as well as to San Francisco and picturesque southern Arizona, as he slowly uncovers the bloody secrets surrounding the mysterious FBI badge. He’s got the brains and the leads. Now all he and Lindsey have to do is live long enough to bring justice to a fifty year old crime.

Arizona Dreams

When a former student turns up in David Mapstone’s office, she seems to have 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 fast buck city of newcomers seeking fresh starts from sometimes dark pasts. Just ask David’s wife, Deputy Lindsey Faith Mapstone. One morning the start of the Willo District home tour is interrupted by murder. A man lies dead with an ice pick in his brain. And Lindsey runs right into her half sister Robin among the crowd gathering in the historic Phoenix neighborhood, the sister Lindsey hasn’t seen in years. The reunion with Robin rekindles memories about their rough upbringing and the deep rift that they may, or may not, bridge. Why is Robin here now? David has his own problems. There’s a body in the desert, right where the letter said it would be found. But it’s weeks old, not years. And the ‘former student’ who brought in the letter has disappeared. When David finally locates her, she turns out to be a sham, the wife of a politician with a vendetta against Mapstone’s boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta. But what’s her agenda? And then even fresher 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. But Mapstone knows something sinister is fueling this increasingly dangerous case…
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Cactus Heart

In this ‘prequel’ to the popular David Mapstone mysteries, author Jon Talton takes us back to 1999, when everything dot com was making money, the Y2K bug was the greatest danger facing the world, and the good times seemed as if they would never end.
It was a time before David and Lindsey were together, before Mike Peralta was sherriff, and before David had rid himself of the sexy and mysterious Gretchen.
In Phoenix, it’s the sweet season and 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 from six decades ago.
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…
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South Phoenix Rules

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.

The Pain Nurse

Cheryl Beth Wilson is an elite nurse at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital who finds a doctor brutally murdered in a secluded office. Wilson had been having an affair with the doctoras husband, a surgeon, and this makes her a aperson of interesta to the police, if not at outright suspect. But someone other than the cops is watching Cheryl Beth. The killing comes as former homicide detective Will Borders is just hours out of surgery. But as his stretcher is wheeled past the crime scene, he knows this is no random act of violence. Instead, it has all the marks of a serial killer case he supposedly solved years before. Rebuked by his former partner and unable even to walk, Borders starts to investigate. He teams up with Cheryl Beth, who is desperate to clear her name. But as the city teeters on the edge of violence and a killer grows closer, the two are running out of time to unlock the secrets of the murder and the brooding, old hospital. The Pain Nurse begins a new series by the author of the award winning David Mapstone series.

Powers of Arrest

Cheryl Beth Wilson is an elite nurse at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital who finds a doctor brutally murdered in a secluded office. Wilson had been having an affair with the doctoras husband, a surgeon, and this makes her a aperson of interesta to the police, if not at outright suspect. But someone other than the cops is watching Cheryl Beth. The killing comes as former homicide detective Will Borders is just hours out of surgery. But as his stretcher is wheeled past the crime scene, he knows this is no random act of violence. Instead, it has all the marks of a serial killer case he supposedly solved years before. Rebuked by his former partner and unable even to walk, Borders starts to investigate. He teams up with Cheryl Beth, who is desperate to clear her name. But as the city teeters on the edge of violence and a killer grows closer, the two are running out of time to unlock the secrets of the murder and the brooding, old hospital. The Pain Nurse begins a new series by the author of the award winning David Mapstone series.

Deadline Man

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. It’s all about to be violently upended when he goes out on what seems like the most mundane of assignments, looking into a staid company that ”never makes news.” But…
from the moment one of his sources takes a dive off a downtown skyscraper, the columnist is plunged into a harrowing maze of murder, intrigue and secrets that powerful forces intend to keep hidden at all costs. All he has to go on is a corporate world where nothing is as it seems, increasingly menacing encounters with mysterious federal agents and the unsettling meme ”eleven/eleven.” Meanwhile, the paper itself is dying. The columnist joins with an aggressive young reporter to see if one explosive story can save a newspaper and much more. They’re running to make the deadline of their lives and failure will bring lethal consequences. Deadline Man is Jon Talton at his best, a novel that is both electrifying and intelligent, capturing the romance and harsh reality of newspaper journalism while raising important questions that will haunt readers long after the fast paced action ends.