<div><b>Now working homicide, Wager lands a gruesome case in the botanic garden</b><BR>Homicide cops are always suspicious of the drug enforcement division, so when ex-narcotics detective Gabe Wager arrives on the murder squad, his first assignment is the graveyard shift. His new commanding officer hopes that the late shift will keep Wager out of trouble, and give him a chance to learn the byzantine regulations that govern murder investigations. But two days later, a call comes in just after dawn reporting a death at Denver&rsquo;s botanic gardens. Wager could leave it for the morning shift, but he is hungry to prove himself, and legs it over to the scene of the horrid crime. The young woman&rsquo;s head has been left inside the gardens, her body nowhere to be found. Without any way of identifying her, Wager is stuck without a lead. But when her torso surfaces in a junkyard, he begins the slow grind of finding the murderer who dismembered this once beautiful model.</div>

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Speak for the Dead

<div><B>Winner of the Edgar Award: A letter tips off a Denver narcotics detective to a colossal smuggling ring</B> Once, Denver&rsquo;s small-time pushers sold nothing harder than dime bags of bad California grass. But in the last year, heroin has appeared on the streets of the Mile High City, and the police department has responded by forming a narcotics division. Detective Gabe Wager and his rookie partner spend their nights trailing dealers, making buys, and acquiring informants, in the hope that a small arrest could turn into a major case. After months picking up scraps, a stray piece of information is about to put Wager on to the biggest bust of his career. A letter from the Seattle DEA says that an informant has named Denver&rsquo;s Rare Thing Import Shop as a front for nearly a thousand pounds a week of smuggled marijuana. The case could make Wager&rsquo;s career&mdash;if the smugglers don&rsquo;t kill him first.</div>

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The Alvarez Journal

<div><b>A botched coke bust forces Wager to go undercover for the first time in years</b><BR>For six months, the Denver narcotics team and the DEA have built a case against a cocaine-dealing heavy named Farnsworth. When Detective Reitman makes the final buy, he runs a field test to make sure the package of powder he&rsquo;s just purchased is really cocaine. The test is positive, and the bust goes down. Afterwards, the DEA&rsquo;s lab says that Reitman was wrong&mdash;he&rsquo;d just bought two and a half pounds of harmless, legal lactose. The case is thrown out, Reitman is busted down to uniform work, and Gabe Wager has to pick up the pieces. The department asks Detective Wager to go undercover and build a new case against Farnsworth. It has been years since Wager impersonated a drug addict, and undercover work&rsquo;s heady mix of lies and fear has ceased to hold any appeal. Reluctantly, he dons his new identity, and hopes that his colleague&rsquo;s screw-up doesn&rsquo;t cost him his life.</div>

The Farnsworth Score

<div><b>A tip about a murdered mob boss forces Gabe Wager to reopen a cold case</b><BR>A year ago, Marco Scorvelli was murdered while picking up his morning paper. A sawed-off shotgun put a hole in his stomach, and streaked the inside of his sports coat with the mob boss&rsquo;s innards. As Scorvelli crawled towards his front door, the killer left the shotgun angled neatly on the sidewalk. No prints were recovered, and no headway was ever made on the case. Now a reliable underworld source passes a message to homicide detective Gabe Wager. The killing wasn&rsquo;t ordered by a rival family, but by Scorvelli&rsquo;s brother, in an attempt to take control of the organization. After a year of peace, a war is about to erupt between Denver&rsquo;s Italian and Hispanic crime syndicates, and Gabe Wager will be in the middle, trying to keep the city from burning to the ground.</div>

Angle of Attack

<div><b>Kirk watches nervously as a new employee goes undercover with a drug ring</b><BR>The employees at the Advantage Company have started to steal. They are angrier than they used to be, and also clumsier&mdash;accident reports have spiked. To Devlin Kirk, these are telltale signs of on-the-job drug abuse. Hired by Advantage to smash the drug ring that&rsquo;s sprung up inside its factory, Kirk sends his newest employee, earnest farm boy Chris Newman, to infiltrate the company. Newman sees suspicious activity everywhere, but lacks the experience to find hard evidence. Only when Newman is tortured to death is Kirk sure that the kid was on to something. Meanwhile, Kirk&rsquo;s partner, Bunch, takes a job working as a bodyguard for a man who claims to be hunted by Japanese assassins. Kirk &amp; Associates has a reputation of doing anything for its clients. In these two cases, the job wants blood.</div>

Body Guard

<div><b>To get his agency off the ground, security expert Devlin Kirk takes a dangerous case</b><BR>Sabotage threatens the profits of industrial giant McAllister Enterprises. Twice already, accounting errors have forced the company to drop out of $100 million deals, and both times a competing firm, the Aegis Group, swooped in to take over. The CEO suspects industrial espionage, and the obvious suspect is division director Austin Haas, who declined a job offer from Aegis six months ago but may be working for them from the inside. Before firing Haas, the CEO wants to be sure. In this industry, when you want to be sure, you call Devlin Kirk. Kirk, an ex-Secret Service agent, is struggling to establish his new private security agency. He doesn&rsquo;t like McAllister and he doesn&rsquo;t like the case, but debts are mounting against his small firm, and his client list is too short to say no. When Haas is found shot in an apparent suicide, things move from legal to lethal.</div>

Suicide Season

<div><b>When a stripper is murdered, Gabe Wager turns the red-light district inside out</b><BR>More than any other establishment on Denver&rsquo;s red-light strip, the Cinnamon Club has taken advantage of the new law allowing all-nude dancing. What was once confined to back rooms now takes center stage, and the activities in the club&rsquo;s private section grow ever more depraved. Annette Sheldon is the Cinnamon Club&rsquo;s rising star until her body is found dumped in an alley, eyes pecked out by scavenging magpies. Homicide detective Gabe Wager and his partner pull Annette&rsquo;s husband in for questioning, and though they don&rsquo;t think he killed her, they do think he&rsquo;s lying about something. When a second dancer is murdered, Wager goes undercover on the strip, searching for the man with the violent fetish. The more questions he asks, though, the more he risks becoming the killer&rsquo;s next target.</div>

Strip Search

<div><b>Wager hunts for the killer of a black councilman, as the city threatens to riot</b><BR>Gabe&rsquo;s girlfriend Jo is drowning. She stares up at him, eyes wide with terror, as he fights to grab her hand. In a moment, the frothing river swallows her up, and Jo is gone. Nine months have passed since Jo&rsquo;s death, and Detective Wager cannot get the image out of his mind. Rather than fight the urge to blame himself, he embraces the guilt, punishing himself for it every day. Only his work on the homicide squad can distract him, and he has just landed a case fraught with political implications. A crusading black city councilman is found murdered in an abandoned lot, and the city teeters on the edge of a riot. As Wager investigates the politician&rsquo;s secret past, he must balance his own pain with a burning need to see justice done.</div>

The Killing Zone

<div><b>A forcibly retired marine investigates the disappearance of a young girl</b><BR>Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Steele is too honest for Washington. If any other Marine Corps investigator had noticed a congressman&rsquo;s corruption, he might have kept his mouth shut. But Steele knows his ultimate duty and blows the whistle on a treasonous lawmaker, earning himself a pat on the back and a swift kick out the door. Steele returns to his hometown of San Diego, hoping for a quiet retirement. Instead he finds a chilling mystery that will make him question everything about the country he spent so long trying to protect. While helping a friend search for his missing granddaughter, Steele makes his way to Colorado. There he uncovers a sinister satanic cult, whose acolytes relish sacrificial death, and who won&rsquo;t think twice about trying to take out an honorable ex-marine.</div>

When Reason Sleeps

<div><b>When a woman burns to death, Gabe Wager uncovers a nest of short-fuse fanatics </b><BR>The fire department finds her in the closet, knees clutched to her chest, body charred beyond recognition. At first they can&rsquo;t even tell that the corpse was a woman. Although the death appears accidental, they call in homicide detective Gabe Wager to make sure. Forensics identifies her as Pauline Tillotson, an FBI informant working from inside an environmentalist group with terrorist leanings. Her cover had been blown, and the extremists killed her to protect a sinister plan to annihilate Denver. As Wager races to save his town, two policemen are killed and a teenager falls victim to an escalating drug war. Denver is coming apart at the seams, but if Gabe Wager can&rsquo;t stop the eco-terrorist plot, there won&rsquo;t be anyone left in the Mile High City to care.</div>

Endangered Species

<div><b>The FBI asks Wager to clean up a mess on an Indian reservation</b><BR>Pressure is rising at Colorado&rsquo;s Squaw Point Reservation, and the area is about to explode. After a federal agent is murdered and several park rangers are attacked, a mess of federal agencies descends on the area, hopelessly muddying the situation. To put a local face on the investigation, the FBI recruits Denver homicide detective Gabe Wager. When he arrives on the reservation, he finds a local populace that&rsquo;s too frightened to talk to the police. A survivalist militia called the Constitutional Posse has taken control of the area, and threatens harm to anyone stupid enough to question its agenda. When Wager pushes against the Posse, they push back, giving him a savage thrashing. To beat them, he&rsquo;ll have to remind the locals that no militia is as terrifying as a determined cop.</div>

The Leaning Land

<div><b>When gang warfare claims his cousin, Detective Wager seeks justice</b><BR>There was a time in Denver when a child&rsquo;s murder was a tragedy, but now that gangs have taken hold of the city, teenage deaths are sickeningly routine. As far as homicide detective Gabriel Wager can tell, the latest victim, a thirteen-year-old boy, was a good kid, with no affiliation to any local gang. But in gangland, even innocents have a way of becoming targets. As he investigates the boy&rsquo;s murder, Wager&rsquo;s aunt asks him to speak to her son Julio, a teenager who&rsquo;s been cutting class and quit his after-school construction job. They fail to connect, and a few days later Julio is found executed in the same style as the previous boy, shot in the back of the head. As he tries to unravel the dual mystery, Wager finds himself deep in a callous world, where even children can be killers.</div>

Blood Line

<div><b>An unidentified body points Wager to a radical religious sect</b><BR>A year ago, homicide detective Gabe Wager had a man killed. Though Wager feels no guilt at doing away with an evil man, his partner, Max Axton, is disgusted, and has hardly spoken to him for a year. Now Wager and Axton have to work together to solve a baffling crime that takes them to the border of Colorado&mdash;and the limits of human faith. They find the body on Denver&rsquo;s outskirts, stripped of identifying marks and clutching a drawing of a sword-bearing angel. The picture is a clue: the calling card of a boastful killer. It leads Wager and Axton to the state&rsquo;s desolate fringe, where a radical Mormon group refuses to follow its church into the modern world, killing to protect their way of life.</div>

The Avenging Angel

<div><b>An old cowboy asks Gabe for help with his estranged sons</b><BR>When he was a teenager, Gabe Wager and his friends in the Denver <i>barrio</i> had no greater idol than Vaquero Tommy Sanchez. One of the rare Mexicans to break through into professional rodeo, Sanchez was a hero to every Hispanic boy with dreams of making it in a white man&rsquo;s world. By the time Sanchez&rsquo;s star faded, Wager was away with the Marine Corps, enduring terrors but supported by his memories of hot, dusty rodeo days. Now the old <i>barrio</i> has been bulldozed, Wager is a homicide detective, and Sanchez is little more than a memory of faded glory. The retired cowboy&rsquo;s estranged sons are following in his footsteps, and he fears they may have fallen in with a bad crowd. He asks Wager to find them and keep them out of trouble. Wager agrees, even though rogue police work could cost him his badge. What man could ever refuse his boyhood hero?</div>

Ground Money

<div><b>Devlin investigates a missing Salvadoran&rsquo;s gruesome fate</b><BR>Devlin Kirk and his partner Bunchcroft are Denver&rsquo;s finest industrial security experts, even if Denver doesn&rsquo;t see it that way. Their last big case got them out of debt, but since then the well has been dry. Their firm is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy when Nestor Calamaro, a young illegal immigrant whose family is close to Bunch, disappears. Kirk can&rsquo;t afford any pro bono work, but Bunch talks him into the good deed. Missing persons cases are usually simple. This one is not. Nestor&rsquo;s trail leads Kirk and Bunch to two more missing immigrants, all of whom are connected to Antibodies Research, a biotech start-up whose work is shrouded in extreme secrecy. For Kirk and Bunch, penetrating their security system is the easy part. But when they learn the terrible truth behind Nestor&rsquo;s disappearance, they risk becoming missing persons themselves.</div>

Parts Unknown

<div><b>Targeted by thugs, a wrestling impresario reaches out to an old friend</b><BR>When Otto Lidke got a tryout in pro football, he hired a lawyer friend named Jim Raiford to handle his contract. The negotiations were bungled, forcing both men into a career change. Trying to start a pro wrestling circuit in Denver, Lidke runs afoul of the national federation, which does everything it can&mdash;legal and otherwise&mdash;to stamp out his new venture. When shady business practices escalate into threats on his life, Lidke calls on Raiford, now a private investigator, to dig up some dirt on the men who are trying to put him out of business.<BR>But instead he gets Raiford&rsquo;s daughter, Julie&mdash;a whip-smart sleuth looking to prove she&rsquo;s every bit as savvy as her father. As Julie and her dad dig into the vicious world of small-time wrestling, they find that though the fights may be fixed, the danger is all too real.  </div>

Body Slam

<div><B>Two detectives take to the high seas after a sailor&rsquo;s death in a mystery that &ldquo;succeeds in making life aboard a huge oil tanker both fascinating and scary&rdquo; (<I>Publishers Weekly</I>).</B><BR /><BR /> The Rossi family received only a handful of letters after their son shipped out on the supertanker <I>Aurora Victorious</I>. The first dispatches were from Harold himself, describing the blend of tedium and excitement that defined life onboard the ship. The last communication came from the ship&rsquo;s owners: four brief sentences informing them that their son had died and been buried at sea. Desperate to know more, the Rossis turn to James and Julie Raiford, the father-daughter detective team behind the Touchstone Agency. As the Raifords soon learn, work on the open sea is dangerous&mdash;and asking questions can be deadly.<BR /><BR /> When the shipping company stonewalls the investigation, James joins the <I>Aurora Victorious</I> as an electronics officer, and Julie digs into the proprietors&rsquo; shadowy background. International oil shipping is a ruthless business, and its secrets run as deep as the ocean itself.</div>

Rex Burns
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Books By Rex Burns (17 Books)