<div>&ldquo;Suspenseful plotting . . . another satisfying Joshua Croft adventure&rdquo; as the Santa Fe PI trails a mother who&rsquo;s snatched her daughter from her TV star ex (Kirkus Reviews). After a particularly nasty divorce, Melissa, the ex-wife of actor Roy Alonzo, accused the handsome TV star of abusing their daughter. Then she took their child and disappeared. Santa Fe private investigator Joshua Croft has no real desire to get entangled in the sordid lives of Hollywood&rsquo;s rich and famous. But a Santa Fe underworld kingpin happens to be Alonzo&rsquo;s uncle and has requested Croft&rsquo;s help, an offer that&rsquo;s tough to refuse. The closer Croft gets to the truth about the shocking Alonzo affair, the more urgent finding the missing mother and child becomes&mdash;especially after Melissa&rsquo;s sister is killed. Croft suspects this murder could have something to do with Melissa&rsquo;s association with the group Sanctuary and its refugees from Central American terror. Or perhaps it&rsquo;s connected to a clandestine rescue group that protects battered wives and children. Either way, the situation gets bleaker by the hour, with a less-than-trustworthy FBI agent impeding Croft&rsquo;s investigation and even more disappearances and deaths. Apparently the adversaries in this dark affair mean serious business, and time is running out for the runaways&mdash;and perhaps for the private detective who&rsquo;s on their trail as well.</div>

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A Flower in the Desert

<div>A ruthless killer shadows Oscar Wilde across the frontier in this &ldquo;perfect blend of mystery, satire and travelogue&rdquo; by the author of Miss Lizzie (Publishers Weekly). An outrageously controversial literary icon in Great Britain, Irish poet, novelist, and playwright Oscar Wilde has taken his act to America in 1882. The renowned wit is thrilling audiences on his tour of the American West, while gleefully soaking in the rugged ambiance of dusty cow towns and rough saloons. But all isn&rsquo;t well on the lecture circuit. At every stop, soon after Wilde&rsquo;s arrival, eviscerated corpses of redheaded prostitutes are turning up&mdash;a grim &ldquo;coincidence&rdquo; that hasn&rsquo;t been lost on dour, alcoholic federal marshal Bob Grigsby. Apparently there&rsquo;s a serial killer hiding among the writer&rsquo;s traveling entourage: a motley group of managers, servants, and European aristocrats that has lately included the famed gunman John &ldquo;Doc&rdquo; Holliday. Between his liaisons with married admirer Elizabeth McCourt Doe and fending off potential assaults by unamused cowboys, the flamboyant dandy decides it might be prudent to assist Grigsby in his investigation. After all, his reputation has already been savaged. Unmasking a killer might help to repair it&mdash;as long as the manhunt remains entertaining enough . . . and Wilde lives to quip another day.</div>

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Wilde West

<div>The &ldquo;compelling&rdquo; conclusion of the Southwestern mystery series culminates in a showdown between the Santa Fe PI and the convict who shot the woman he loves (Booklist). Rita Mondragon is lying comatose and near death in a Santa Fe hospital, and her normally even-tempered partner and paramour, private detective Joshua Croft, is on a razor&rsquo;s edge. This is the second time Rita&rsquo;s been shot by Ernie Martinez&mdash;the first was years ago when he killed her husband and put Rita in a wheelchair&mdash;and now the recently escaped convict is on the run with his equally twisted cellmate Luiz Lucero. Despite a massive police manhunt, and warnings from the FBI and the DEA to back off, Croft sets out to capture the killers himself. As the crazed convicts leave a trail of murder and destruction behind them&mdash;from New Mexico to Las Vegas to Denver and across Kansas and Texas&mdash;one by one, their pursuers drop by the wayside. Suddenly a strange twist of fate has left only one man hunter remaining&mdash;Joshua Croft&mdash;in a breathtaking kill-or-be-killed climax in the Florida Everglades.</div>

Accustomed to the Dark

<div>The notorious Lizzie Borden investigates a brutal axe-murder that&rsquo;s strangely reminiscent of her own alleged crimes in this &ldquo;entertaining&rdquo; historical novel (The New York Times). It has been thirty years since a Massachusetts jury acquitted Lizzie Borden of brutally murdering her father and stepmother. Now, at the start of the 1920s, she&rsquo;s an aging spinster living a quiet, secluded life by the New England seashore. Young Amanda Burton has heard all the stories, but nothing can dissuade her from spending time with the lonely old woman next door who shows her card tricks and smells of cigars. At age thirteen, Amanda&rsquo;s been left to her own devices during a rather dull and swelteringly summer-long family vacation, and Miss Lizzie is the perfect distraction. But when Amanda stumbles upon her own despised stepmother&rsquo;s corpse, the brutal crime seems eerily similar to a certain double axe-slaying in Fall River three decades earlier. Naturally the whole town immediately suspects Lizzie. The local police, though, are open-minded enough to consider Amanda&rsquo;s brother and father to be viable suspects as well. To help her young friend and clear her own name (again), Lizzie must sharpen her sleuthing skills to find a fiendish killer with an axe to grind.</div>

Miss Lizzie

<div>When a gathering of psychics, astrologers, and New Age practitioners turns deadly, a Santa Fe PI must find a killer in this &ldquo;entertaining adventure&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). Thirteen prominent members of Santa Fe&rsquo;s New Age spiritualism community attended a meeting at the home of a couple of enthusiastic devotees. Only twelve of them survived it. Private investigator Joshua Croft prides himself on his even-handed, eminently rational approach to crime solving. So he feels like a fish out of water surrounded by a motley group of true believers in the wacky and weird. But someone in this bizarre crowd murdered self-styled magic-doer Quentin Bouvier, hanging him from the ceiling rafters with a scarf belonging to Tarot card reader Giacamo Bernardi. And Bernardi&rsquo;s attorney wants Croft to bring the real killer to justice. Perhaps Bouvier&rsquo;s slaying had something to do with a very rare and expensive antique Tarot card that the hanged man recently purchased, which is now&mdash;unsurprisingly&mdash;missing. However, getting down-to-earth answers from people who occupy a different reality won&rsquo;t be easy. But when more New Agers suddenly depart this mortal plane, Croft needs to up the ante to catch a killer who&rsquo;s not playing with a full deck.</div>

The Hanged Man

<div>In the first book of a &ldquo;promising&rdquo; Southwestern mystery series, a Santa Fe PI&rsquo;s search for a stolen necklace leads to drugs, pornography, and murder (The New York Times Book Review). As an associate at Santa Fe&rsquo;s Mondragon Detective Agency, Joshua Croft has heard a lot of strange proposals. But nothing stranger than when a cowboy comes in and asks him to help fence a stolen $100,000 necklace. Thinking he has a deal with Croft, the cowboy leaves as mysteriously as he arrived. The next day he turns up dead, riddled with bullets, and the insurance company that already settled the claim for the necklace&rsquo;s wealthy owners wants Croft&rsquo;s beautiful, wheelchair-bound boss, Rita Mondragon, and her agency to get the missing jewelry back. As Croft starts to dig into the slain cowboy&rsquo;s seedier, more sinister associates as well as the private lives of a privileged family with enough skeletons in their closets to populate a graveyard, he uncovers a lot more than some stolen jewels: pornography, drugs, Native American grave robbing, and multiple murders. Now he just has to stay alive long enough to put all the pieces together . . .</div>

Wall of Glass

<div>A Santa Fe PI&rsquo;s search for stolen Native American bones unearths dark deeds and a fresh murder in a gripping mystery &ldquo;reminiscent of Tony Hillerman&rdquo; (Booklist). Private investigator Joshua Croft never expected to see Daniel Begay again after he helped the elderly Native American fend off a group of abusive rednecks. But now the old man has come to Croft&rsquo;s Santa Fe office with a bizarre request: He wants the detective to recover human bones that have been missing since 1925. The skeleton of Ganado, a Navajo warrior, was stolen decades earlier by Dennis Lessing, who found them while he was searching for oil on sacred Native American land. Less than a month later, Lessing was killed, and Ganado&rsquo;s bones have not been seen since. What at first seems like a relatively harmless&mdash;if hopeless&mdash;pursuit grows graver by the hour, as Croft&rsquo;s search takes him from the halls of an El Paso university to the hard lands of the Navajo Reservation. But when his digging into the past starts to uncover other skeletons besides Ganado&rsquo;s, Croft may be the next one to fall victim to someone desperate enough to kill to keep secrets buried.</div>

At Ease with the Dead

<div>Lizzie Borden and Amanda Burton join forces with Dorothy Parker to solve a grisly murder in Prohibition-era New York in this &ldquo;assured and witty&rdquo; mystery (Publishers Weekly). Sixteen-year-old Amanda Burton is thrilled to be spending the summer in New York City at her glamorous uncle John&rsquo;s apartment in the Dakota while her parents are off visiting Tibet. It&rsquo;s 1924, the decade is roaring, and she&rsquo;s out on the town every night with her father&rsquo;s flamboyant younger brother&mdash;seeing Broadway shows, going to fancy restaurants and speakeasies, meeting John&rsquo;s rich and famous friends, and even an occasional gangster. It&rsquo;s all great fun&mdash;until the morning she stumbles upon her uncle dead on the floor with a hatchet blade buried in his skull. And with Amanda as the prime murder suspect, the New York City cops consider the case as good as closed. Luckily the hapless teen has an old ally in town: the infamous&mdash;albeit acquitted&mdash;alleged axe murderess Lizzie Borden. Miss Lizzie and her new pal, the renowned acerbic wit Dorothy Parker, are on the job faster than you can say, &ldquo;Forty whacks.&rdquo; But trolling the glittering New York night scene and underworld for a killer can be a dangerous occupation for an old lady with a shady past, a sharp-witted literary icon, and a teenager with a history of violently losing relatives&mdash;especially when they keep turning up dead bodies.</div>

Walter Satterthwait
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Books By Walter Satterthwait (8 Books)

A Flower in the Desert

Wilde West

Accustomed to the Dark

Miss Lizzie

The Hanged Man

Wall of Glass

At Ease with the Dead

New York Nocturne

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Walter SatterthwaitFollow this author