Western Crime Fiction

Driving home from Utah, Howard Moon Deer is passing through an empty stretch of New Mexico desert when a young Chinese woman staggers onto the highway, seemingly out of nowhere, and collapses before his onrushing car. Howie screeches to a stop but she dies before he is able to get help. Who was this woman and where did she come from? When Jack Wilder and Howie are hired by a non-profit organization, Washington Women Against Trafficking, they are soon embroiled in the most dangerous case of their career.

It's April, but there's still snow on the Montana mountains the day a member of the Madison River Liar and Fly Tiers club finds a Santa hat in the chimney of his rented cabin. With the flue clogged, and desperate to make a fire, he climbs up to the roof only to find the body of a teenage girl wedged into the chimney.

Wolves howl as a riderless horse returns at sunset to the Culpepper Dude Ranch in the Madison Valley. The missing woman, Nanika Martinelli, is better known as the Fly Fishing Venus, a red-haired river guide who lures clients the way dry flies draw trout. As Sheriff Martha Ettinger follows hoof tracks in the snow, she finds one of the men who has fallen under the temptress' spell impaled on the antler tine of a giant bull elk, a kill that' s been claimed by a wolf pack. An accident? If not, is the killer human or animal?

There'd been several killings in Melville. Unusual killings, no witnesses, no clues, and no suspects. Sheriff Jim Bonner was having a time trying to narrow his search down. He had no idea where to look, or what he might be looking for. The murder was so gruesome, so unexpected, neither him nor his deputy, Smitty Younger, knew where to start looking. Whoever was doing this to his peaceful town was clever and covered his tracks. So Jim set about setting a trap for the villain.

Nothing much happens in Peaceful Valley, Montana. And that's just how Sheriff Lucas Monk likes it. Aside from the occasional drunken brawl or minor disturbance out on the reservation, he hasn't had to resort to his fists or sidearm in years. That is, until mid-October, 1914, when the theft of a wooden cigar store Indian sets off a crime wave like nothing Lucas has ever seen. Teenager Charity Axthelm goes missing, Reba Purvis' housekeeper is poisoned with cyanide Reba is sure was meant for her, and Lucas' gut tells him that this is only the beginning.

There are rules in the West no matter what era you were born in, and it's up to lawman Ty Dawson to make sure they're followed in the valley he calls home. The people living on this unforgiving land keep to themselves and are wary of the modern world's encroachment into their quiet lives. So it's not without some suspicion that Dawson confronts a newcomer to the region: a record producer who has built a music studio in an isolated compound.

Reeling from the news dropped on his desk days earlier, Sheriff Elven Hallie is left questioning everyone and everything in his life. But when a former deputy is burned to death, Elven must push aside the turmoil in his personal life to catch the killer. As if that wasn’t enough, new faces from the Starcher clan enter his county with vengeance in their eyes for Corbin’s death. Paranoid, angry, and directionless, Elven must lean on those closest to him to bring a ruthless murderer to justice. But that’s easier said than done when it’s those closest to him who he trusts the least.

Movie star Mary Marvell consults with Hercule Poirot after receiving threatening letters that warn her to return her diamond, the famous "Western Star", to its rightful owner. But who does own the diamond, and is it even the genuine article?

When Santa Claus enters a Texas bank just before Christmas in 1927, no one expects him to pull a gun. The fake white beard hides his identity from his neighbors while he and three others take everything. But their easy heist goes sideways fast when armed lawmen and citizens assemble to claim a new reward for dead bank robbers. Taking hostages, the gang forces a path through a frenzied and bloody shootout, setting the whole Lone Star state on their trail. One bandit dies in the getaway.

Once he was a young, happily married businessman. Then he lost his wife to human madness and that young man was gone, replaced by the Loner, the wandering son of legendary gunfighter Frank Morgan, and now the current occupant of a cell in the brutal and unforgiving Hell Gate prison. The Kid's crime? He looked too much like an outlaw who escaped from this very prison. So the Kid teams up with a fellow inmate with an escape plan, vowing to hunt down a look-alike killer on the loose.

Ty Dawson, now the sheriff of Oregon's Meriwether County, is ready to put a trying year behind him, but he's afforded no such luck. In a country still coming to grips with the Vietnam War, Watergate, and Charles Manson, Ty's neck of the woods isn't safe from the turmoil-especially when a commune of young so-called hippies springs up out of nowhere . . .

The story begins in 1900 with the birth of the main character, Frank Hardin. Following his heroic military service with "Black Jack" Pershing in France during the Great War, Frank comes home and takes up the gun and badge, following in the footsteps of his father who was a career lawman. After the death of his father, Frank heads to a violent Texas oilfield boomtown in a misguided plan to come to the aid of his first girlfriend who is being victimized by a gang of violent criminals who are running the town.

Some people, it is said, have the "Midas touch", and all that they touch turns to gold. For Elena Ellery, however, the opposite is true. Everyone that Elena comes into contact with, fares badly. When gold is discovered on what was historically believed to be her father's property but was never registered to him and the placer miners who discovered the gold are shot dead by her family in an unfortunate misunderstanding, this unleashes a chain of events that affect the rest of her life.

The Man Who Moiled for Gold draws its title from the Robert W. Service poem: "The Cremation of Sam McGee". The poem tells of suffering, loneliness, frustration, and ultimately death. Charley Martin experienced all of these emotions along with love and success while becoming the man who moiled for gold. Charley Martin, in 1912, is found mining the hard rock of Butte, Montana. Years of breathing the fine quartz dust in the pits have given Charley silicosis. Discovery of this incurable condition, by the mine super, brought an abrupt change to the 69-year old miner's life.

He is looking for a little bit of peace and trying to start a new life, but everywhere he goes, trouble seems to find him. This time, it comes in the form of a beautiful woman.

Texas Ranger Freddie Espinoza is center stage in pursuit of the drug-smuggling county sheriff. Freddie discovers an old friend—and DEA agent—has the sheriff in his crosshairs. Their former Army buddy, a Benedictine monk in his final days, is also on the case in a very unusual way.

It’s 1975, and cowboy Johnny Riles is a headcase. He’s depressed, he’s drunk, and he’s lonesome as hell. Left by his family to care for the ranch on his own, Johnny manages to keep the cattle alive while struggling to justify his own existence. Embittered by the success of his younger brother, Kitch, a professional basketball player, it is only thanks to a salt-dry sense of humor and a plentiful supply of whiskey that Johnny keeps himself aboveground.

When a man who isn’t who he claims to be befriends Patrick Flint and his son during a wilderness excursion with movers and shakers from across the globe, it puts the father-son duo dead in the bullseye of a murder target. To stop a gang of ruthless killers, the Flints must unriddle the mystery man’s identity before the killers put a stop to them all. Stag Party is the sixth book in the Patrick Flint series of thrilling mysteries, a spin-off from the What Doesn't Kill You saga.

It's been six weeks since Jack McBride's life went to hell: The resolution of his first case as chief sparked a county-wide drug war, his brother Eddie rode into town with a pocket full of cocaine and trouble on his mind, his estranged wife returned from her one-year sabbatical determined to win him back, and Ellie Martin ended their brief affair.

Woodson Fulk rides with Abigail Friedan's posse once again, this time to rescue a kidnapped young woman. They soon discover that their quarry has been taken to the town of Devil's Gate, which is inhabited entirely by outlaws of many different gangs, all engaged in a tenuous truce to keep the peace.