Police Small Town Mystery

Lyndon B. Johnson is president, Beatlemania is in overdrive, and gasoline costs 30 cents a gallon when Ned Parker retires as constable in Center Springs, Texas. But his plan to live a quiet life as a cotton farmer is torpedoed. A phone call leads Ned to a body in the Red River and into the urgent investigation headed by his nephew, the newly elected constable Cody Parker. Together they work to head off a multistate killing spree that sets northeast Texas on fire.

In 1964, when Ned Parker, farmer and part-time constable, is summoned to a cornfield one hot morning to examine the remains of a tortured bird dog, he discovers that there is a dark presence in their quiet community of Center Springs, Texas. Ned is usually confident handling moonshiners, drunks, and instances of domestic dispute. But when it comes to animal atrocities—which then turn to murder—the investigation spins beyond his abilities.

Sleepy Benteen County, Kansas, turns frantic on election day. The radical religious right is out to unseat Sheriff English, better known as Englishman, after his deputy accidentally rams into a school bus carrying the Benteen County teen choir.

Ike Schwartz, former spook and erstwhile sheriff of Picketsville, has his vacation interrupted when an old CIA buddy asks him to look into a pilot's disappearance. What looks like a simple missing person's case soon catapults Ike into an international thriller with intimations of terrorism that might threaten the nation and its leaders.

Something terrifying is happening to the dogs in the mountain community of Mason County, Virginia. Pets are vanishing mysteriously and “missing dog” posters cover the waiting room walls at Dr. Rachel Goddard’s veterinary clinic. A pack of feral canines roams at night, attacking livestock in a desperate search for food. Now a prominent physician, Gordon Hall, has been found dead in his yard, his throat torn open. Sheriff’s Department investigator Tom Bridger believes the killing was premeditated murder, with a trained attack dog as the weapon.

Former Posadas County Sheriff Bill Gastner, now a New Mexico Livestock Inspector, is enjoying a day on Herb Torrances. But Bill soon finds himself ferrying a broken cowpuncher in the back of his SUV, headed out to meet an ambulance.

At first, Alexa Glock's initial case as a traveling forensic investigator seems straightforward - her expertise in teeth helps her identify the skeletal remains of a hunter found on the remote Stewart Island of New Zealand. But when she realizes the bullet lodged in his skull was not self-inflicted, and then a second shark-ravaged body washes up on Ringaringa Beach, it's clear that something dangerous is lurking in the beautiful waters surrounding the island. The disturbing sight seems to confirm what locals have hashed out in the pub.

Brett Buchanan never imagined herself returning to Crestwood, Washington, where her sister was murdered 20 years ago. But when she's offered a detective position with the local police department, she decides to take the job. Between figuring out how to fit in as the squad's first female detective and caring for her grandmother who is showing signs of dementia, Brett doesn't have much time to think about her sister's cold case.

After police officer Colleen McDonald is injured in a case gone south and her partner dies, she leaves her job and friends in small town Oregon for a fresh start as a civilian in Orlando. When a deputy sheriff comes to her door investigating a possible missing person, she’s determined to get him out of her life by beating him at his own game.

As Sheriff Piper Blackwell rushes to a clandestine meeting with an aging, paranoid veteran who believes spies are trailing his every move, she is caught in a fierce thunderstorm. Pounding rain drums against the bluff, washing away the earth and revealing a grisly secret someone tried to bury a long time ago. Putting a name to the skeleton on the bluff, and searching for the thief who robbed the old veteran of his life’s earnings, sends Piper delving into the sleepy towns that dot her rural county. Now she’s digging into pasts perhaps best left alone.

The residents of the small town of Artemis are suspicious when a community called The Drummers moves into a local abandoned church. Their leader, Gideon, claims their aim is simple: to live peacefully off the grid without government interference. But when local power substations are sabotaged and the whole of West Texas loses electricity, all fingers point to them. Forced to intervene, Police Chief Josie Gray and her team try to enter the church only for gunshots to be exchanged. Inside the church, one young girl is killed, with Gideon claiming Josie's stray bullet hit her.

On Oklahoma’s Big Rock Prairie, a deaf boy finds a body in Pennington Creek. Johnston County Deputy Hannah Bond and Chickasaw Lighthorse Police Sergeant Bill Maytubby find a crime scene where nothing seems to fit - from the dead angler’s oversize waders to the kind of fish in his creel. They scour the creekside brush, then hit the road for Texas in a widening search for the killer. On the Big Rock, a towering bearded man is building a limestone replica of Roman Jerusalem for a Christian passion play. His cronies are in league with an interstate fraud ring....

On a bleak Christmas morning, Sewa Tribal Police Officer Heather English patrols a desolate canyon on the Arizona reservation. Back in Kansas, her father, the sheriff of Benteen County, is lonely enough with no family around to go in to work at his office. On the way, Sheriff English calms a wild incident in a church parking lot. Then he hears of a death threat. The crèche, at the center of the town’s largest holiday yard display, has been desecrated, and its owner plans to kill the neighbors he suspects are responsible.

A tough-love school for troubled teens opens its doors in Trout Run, New York. What could go wrong? The locals are thrilled. The North Country Academy promises more jobs and more money flowing into town. But all Police Chief Frank Bennett sees is a throng of juvenile delinquents unpacking on his turf. Then Frank's worst fears are confirmed. An Academy teacher leading a wilderness expedition is mauled to death by a bear. Evidence points to sabotage.

An escaped prisoner eludes police in the thick forests and remote fishing cabins of the Adirondack Mountains. Using his backwoods skills, he stays one step ahead of his pursuers, mocking them as he slips away. To some, Ronnie Gatrell is a folk hero, bravely resisting government authority. To others, he's a harmless prankster. Everyone in Trout Run, New York, seems to enjoy watching him play the police for fools. Except Police Chief Frank Bennett. He knows Ronnie is dangerous and unstable, and he's determined to bring him to justice. Then the game of hide-and-seek turns deadly.

Roccabusambra. Paesino dell'entroterra palermitano, fine anni 70. Un paesino tranquillo viene scosso da un delitto di una efferatezza inaudita. Il ritrovamento del cadavere di una ragazza all'interno del confessionale dell'unica chiesa del paese è un fatto che sconvolge l'intera comunità sia per le modalità del delitto sia per l'età della ragazza, 17 anni. Il fatto criminoso porta in paese un'ondata di curiosi e giornalisti. I carabinieri non riescono a trovare il colpevole, anche se i sospettati sono in molti.

New Mexico Undersheriff Bill Gastner is presented with a case that appears to have brought big-time crime, including drug gangs, into Posadas County.

Detective Abish Taylor left Utah for a reason. But with her husband’s passing, it’s time to come home. Reconnecting with her family means dealing with her past: the father she abandoned and the community she left behind. Her one escape is serving as the sole police detective in the small town of Pleasant View. But when the quiet Mormon suburb in the Wasatch Mountains is shaken by a macabre death - with the hallmarks of a sacred ritual dating back to the days of Brigham Young - Abbie is called into action.

Wesley Crocker is accused of the murder of young Maria Ibarra, who was found near the "camping place" of the drifter. Crocker's account of the previous night leads Undersheriff Bill Gastner to more troubling questions.

Although at first the dead man floating in the old swimming pool at the edge of town seems to have been an accident victim - a staggering drunk tumbling into the water - Rhodes and his small but colorful staff soon uncover murder. It's the second strange death in two weeks (the other was that of John West, killed when he blew up carrying a gasoline can across a field). But where was the Cherokee wagon John was carrying the gas to? And why is his widow so jaunty? West was a solid citizen; Pep Yeldell, the swimming pool decedent, was a man with many enemies.