Native American Fiction Mystery

Choctaw Detective Perry Antelope has been with her partner, Sophia Burns, for only six months. Perry is a seasoned investigator while the ex-Olympian shot putter Sophia is a former street-smart police officer. Together, they are an intrepid pair with an established record of success. But when Perry and Sophia are called to investigate the disappearance of Dels Billy, a beloved women’s Indian Horse Relay rider, they quickly realize that it’s not as cut-and-dry as anything they’ve faced before.

With his heart blown to bits by a staggering loss, Sheriff Zeb Hanks falls into an abyss of drunkenness, hatred, and rage. With the help of Deputy Kate Steele, former sheriff Jake Dablo, medicine man Jimmy Song Bird, and close friend Josh Diamond, Zeb pulls himself back from the edge and turns his rage on the cause of his torment: a Mexican drug and human trafficking cartel.

Lakota beauty Kinton Brulee just snagged an Oregon state deputy fire-marshal job. She thinks she can handle PTSD, and doubters in her male-dominated profession while raising a disabled son and at-risk niece. But when she investigates a hemp farm blaze near home, she races to outwit a killer burning to destroy her.

Outside of Choteau, Montana are three crosses on a plateau, called Priest Butte. The story goes that 160 years ago, Blackfeet warriors savagely murdered three priests. Or the story goes that priests tortured and killed three Blackfeet boys. Two stories. One history.

Oregon State Trooper Gabriel Hawke’s sister, Marion, is on a corporate retreat in Montana when she becomes a murder suspect. Running for her life from the real killer, she contacts Hawke for help. Hawke heads to Montana to find his sister and prove she isn’t a murderer. He hasn’t seen Marion in over 20 years but he knows she wouldn’t kill the man she was about to marry.

Accident or homicide? State trooper Gabriel Hawke is called to a vehicle on fire. When the steam and smoke clears, a charred body is slumped over the steering wheel. The Muzzleloader Rendezvous has attendees from all over the Pacific Northwest, but it’s the local club that raises Hawke’s suspicions.

They say you can't go back home, but Marin Sinclair, end-of-life doula, never felt she had the right to call the Navajo reservation home, and she certainly never expected that answering a plea for help from a long ago friend would put her life in jeopardy. Dinetah, the Navajo Nation, holds some dark memories for her, but what about her life then would make anyone want to kill her?

A world-class scientist goes missing while consulting on a high-stakes project, the construction of an electric storage battery in the deserted pits of the old Kaiser Iron mines. Did this eccentric world-renown hydrologist simply wander off? Or was his fate more ominous? FBI Supervisory Agent Janice Hooper assigns Zack Tolliver, FBI, to the investigation. When someone plants a bomb in his Jeep the day he arrives, Zack realizes there is more at stake than anyone knew. Soon, he finds himself in a desperate duel with an unknown assassin who may very well be more than his match.

The nightmares never cease. Ever since I was a child I have struggled to deal with them. Each night a different horror takes shape, and I see it as if I was there. I wake from these terrifying dreams of another world in which I am running from the strangest visions of evil. Visions that can only exist in nightmares, yet they are all too real to me. Christian Sands is an FBI agent with a unique ability. When his ViCAP unit takes on another serial killer investigation, they soon find themselves in deeper than they bargained for. The killer seems to be ahead of them at every turn.

Fish and Wildlife State Trooper Gabriel Hawke's job is to find a missing family in the Eagle Cap Wilderness. After finding the parents murdered, can he find a little girl on the run? Hawke is an expert tracker, but he isn’t the only one looking for the child. Even leaving the mountain, the girl isn’t safe. The murderers are looking for something - something they believe the child possesses.

When Louise Root, a new client of Cecil Younger, is found murdered, the private investigator finds himself in the middle of an environmental law violation that has deadly repercussions. Cecil finds he is unable to leave behind Root, especially after her ex-lover Hannah asks him for help. On top of it all, Global Mining, the company that runs the gold mine where Root's body was found, hires Younger to get the dirt on an environmentalist who has a connection to the victim. In the midst of all this, Cecil's personal life is fraying.

It's 1952, and Jasper isn't allowed to ask questions or make a fuss. He's lucky to even have a home and must keep his mouth shut and his ears open to stay in his uncle's good graces. No one knows where his mother went or whether she's coming back. Desperate to see her again, he must take matters into his own hands. From the farm, he embarks on a treacherous search that will take him to the squalid hideaways of Detroit and back again, through tawdry taverns, peep shows, and gambling houses.

Rodeo Grace Garnet lives alone, save for his old dog, in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as the Hole. He doesn't get many visitors, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border just south of the Hole, but is instead a member of one of the local Indian tribes.

Métis journalist Leo Desroches has just been released from jail. Fortunately for him, he is re-hired at the paper to write a popular column about crime. It’s summer; the city is hot and buzzing with mosquitoes, and it’s on track for a record number of homicides. Called to the scene of an apparent overdose of a young Native man in the inner city, Leo witnesses some rocks falling out of the body bag, and he picks them up. At first he believes they are crack cocaine but discovers that the rocks are really rough diamonds.

With the aid of the Native American Shaman Conawago, Duncan McCallum has begun to heal from the massacre of his Highland clan by the British. But his new life is shattered when he and Conawago discover a dying Virginian officer nailed to an Indian shrine tree. To their horror, the authorities arrest Conawago and schedule his hanging. As Duncan begins a desperate search for the truth, he finds himself in a maelstrom of deception and violence.

The ritual killing of a young Apache girl on a reservation in rural Arizona takes the listener through many complex layers of relationships between Apache and Anglo cultures. The myth and spiritual fabric of the Apache community pulls Zeb Hanks, a small town sheriff, through a personal journey, making the murder not just a crime to solve but a cathartic passage. The dead never leave us but they do whisper ghost stories that bring the past back to life. Jake Dablo is a drunken, washed up lawman because of his inability to solve the murder of his only granddaughter.

Fish and Wildlife State Trooper Gabriel Hawke encounters a hunter with an illegal tag. The name on the tag belongs to the Wallowa County District Attorney and the man holding the tag isn’t the public defender. As Hawke digs to find out if the DA is corrupt, the hunter’s body is found. Zeroing in on the DA, Hawke finds he has more suspects than the DA and more deaths than the hunter.

Sam Cloudstone is a full-blooded Comanche in today's world. He's an author, a songwriter, a photographer, a bartender, and a bounty hunter. One day he accidentally crosses paths with Melissa Steinhardt, a beautiful and impetuous "damsel in distress", and his life changes forever! Attempting to help her involves him in a 70-year-old mystery that pits the two of them against the FBI, the CIA, and a billionaire drug lord. They end up in a chase across Texas, each new destination dictated by solving the riddle preceding it.

Sheriff Zeb Hanks has his hands full when sociopath Jimmie Joe Walker, recently released from an Arizona state prison, masterminds a devious plan to make himself filthy rich. His plan involves Ángel Gomez, a down-on-his-luck half Mescalero Apache/half Mexican. Ángel's alcoholism and far-fetched dreams make him an unwitting dupe in Jimmie Joe's plans, which end up endangering Ángel's own life, as well as the lives of those he loves.

Who owns what is traditionally considered sacred? Can the Catholic Church legally conspire with the federal government to steal the most sacrosanct of Native American holy places? Holes in the Sky, the second in the series Zeb Hanks: Small Town Sheriff with Big Time Troubles, explores these questions in a clash of cultures mixed with mysterious deaths.