Books

By one in the afternoon I found a sidewalk cafe and was enjoying lunch when I was suddenly surrounded by police.

Two squads and four officers weapons drawn ordered me to my feet and slammed me face down onto the table while I was handcuffed. I was shoved into the backseat of one of the squad cars and whisk off to the police station without any...

Backwater Bridge rose ahead, old and worn, stretching over the slow, dark river like it had something to prove.Two patrol cars waited along the shoulder.Randy stood near the railing. Steve and Tom were a few feet off, already scanning the area.

Randy looked up as they stepped out.
“Chief.”
“Randy.”
“Didn’t think you’d get your first day back this...

“Funny place to meet,” he said, voice steady, carrying just enough to break the silence. Footsteps answered him.

Slow. Measured.Not hiding.

A figure stepped out from the shadows between two abandoned freight cars. No rush. No fear. Just certainty.

Derek’s jaw tightened. “Didn’t think it’d be you,” he said.

“That’s the problem, Chief,” the figure...

A horn blared—long, furious—and the world snapped into violent clarity. A truck, massive and skidding, its tires hissing on the slick road as it fishtailed across the center line.

Derek’s hands moved before his mind caught up. He jerked the wheel to the right, tires screaming as they lost traction. The car lurched, spinning, the world outside...

Guy finished his bottle and set it down. His pale blue eyes studied something off in the woods. “Them people never moved. They were never paid.” he looked over at Derek. “Chief them folks were killed and buried. Buried out there in the mud. I know where.”

“Guy, there were a total of thirty families that showed they were paid five hundred dollars...

The humidity in Heaven didn’t just sit on you; it claimed you. For Chief Derek Landly, it felt like a lead vest—heavy, familiar, and a reminder of the emotional weight he’d been carrying since the night a .38 caliber slug had tried to punch a hole through his retirement plans.

He stood in the doorway of the Heaven Police Station, his hand...

Derek nodded as something caught his eye off to the left on Barlow. “Let’s check that out.” he said and swung the car onto the shoulder just as a shot rang out and the windshield cracked. “Get down!” Derek shouted and keyed the radio. “Shots fired 1204 Barlow road. Request back up.”

“Copy that squad one. All units, all units. Shots fired 1204...

Nappy was on his feet waving his arms and shouting. “Dead body!! Dead body!” while a terrified Sandy Pittman was screaming at the top of her lungs.

Derek ran to the end of the peer as Nappy slowly steered the boat in toward the shore. Dmitriy was on his stomach over the side holding tightly to a fishing pole as the line tugged and pulled. When...

I’ve seen large funerals before but the one for my sister Kathy Taylor Landly filled the church and spilled out onto the street.

My name is Helen Taylor Hanson and I’m here to tell Kathy’s story. I sat beside her three year old son William Harris and her husband Chief of Police Derek Landly in the front row of the church and tried to swallow...

Every woman knows when your man gives you flowers three days in a row, and buys expensive dinners at a top shelf restaurant they want something. So it was that on the third evening of Derek cooking sirloins and agreeing to watch a chick flick on television I knew something was afoot.

“What do you want that you need my permission for?” I asked as...

Sandy Jessop hummed a holiday tune as she walked down the sidewalk from the village parking lot to her shop. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving, and already there were signs that the Christmas holiday would soon be upon them.

Orders for candies and brownies would nearly overpower her shop and she wondered if she’d have enough staff to handle...

Derek sat with a thud in his chair and stared at the empty cardboard box that sat on the desk in front of him. Pacing back and forth in front of the desk was Paul McClusky. His face filled with anger and determination.

“It’s wrong! Just plain wrong!” he snapped as Derek started packing items from the desk into the box.

“Paul, stop.” he said...

Paul took a deep breath and entered a name into the database. He knew it was the right thing to do but the old wounds it would open didn’t seem worth it. Kurt Adams was a lifelong criminal. Running with the gangs in Harris as a teenager, spending four years in a youth detention facility where apparently he had honed his skills and became a...

It was ten minutes past five in the morning. The hint of fall in early October had left a swath of cold air across the entire region, and Mildred was cold. Her first delivery of firewood wouldn’t arrive for another two weeks and the small electric heater was struggling to keep her bedroom above sixty degrees.
Reggie, her German Shepherd, was...

Margaret Walsh stood in front of Ed Hanson’s desk with a determined look on her face.

At seventy-five Margaret had owned and operated the Stitch In Time Quilt Shop for over forty years. She had seen good times, tough times and in between times. Now she wanted help and most of all justice.

“I’m telling you again, Mr. Hanson, a ghost robbed me!”...

Ed Hanson was forced from his job as an undercover operative for the FBI. Now he’s opened up an office in Heaven as a private investigator.
His first client is a young teenage girl who claims that someone raped her in an alley. She doesn’t know who he was, or does she have any physical evidence. Her one condition is he not contact her parents.
...

Police arrested Derek’s friend, FBI Agent Ed Hanson, for murdering an informant. Now his career is in jeopardy and so is his freedom.
Derek and the Heaven police force began an investigation, only to be stymied at every turn. Derek must inlist the aid of Hanson’s attorney and his three top officers in order to set a trap for a dirty agent.
As the...

A young man lies face down soaked in moonshine. He has been thrown from a moving car or truck. A second young man is found impaled on a farm rake. Heaven police must find the killer and soon. Derek will send Mayor George Williams on an undercover assignment to out the still.
But when an old secret in the village’s past comes to light Derek must...

Someone robbed the village of nearly two hundred thousand dollars. Then the bank was robbed by very professional band of criminals.
Derek Landly sets up an undercover sting in an attempt to catch the thieves. Can a slot machine, a jackpot of a million dollars lure the robbers to strike again?
.

Derek and Kathy are just married. As they honeymoon in Paris fires are being set back home.
The town has a problem. There’s an arsonist setting fires. Little clues can be found but as Derek works the case the fire turns deadly and people die.
Can Heaven’s police force catch the fire bug in time