Western Crime Thrillers

Tales is a collection of six short stories by Montana author Dave Lloyd.

The once star profiler for the FBI, Doug ONeal, who has been able to capture the greatest of serial killers, rapists, and criminals, comes back to San Francisco to find the worst of them. Because of this killer's background, the FBI has never even known he existed. Doug has only suspected that he exists. The FBI puts together a task force with the San Francisco police, Anne Borges, and Jeff Shinn to hunt down this suspect to prevent more deaths. The police are always looking for the suspect, but are they looking in the right place?

Buck Hawkins and Dobie Garrett are a pair of cowboys in the Texas Panhandle. They're unlikely outlaws - until their ranch is stolen and the two cowhands framed for rustling and horse theft by a crooked banker. Now with a price on their heads and hunted by the law, the two cowboys decide that if they have to ride the outlaw trail, they might as well be the best holdup artists in Texas. Problem is, they aren't all that good at the trade.

Ted Sweeney. Affable everyman in small-town Montana. Tailgate hung on with baling wire, owner of his own business. Ten minutes ago, his biggest worry had been how to pay for the engagement ring rattling around in his pocket. But that was before he came home to find a corpse tidily arranged in his favorite recliner, his "old pal of a piece of furniture". Is it a warning or a setup or what? Sweeney can't help but admire the efficiency of the work, the slice deep across the guy's throat. Somebody knew what they were doing.

Lenora Whitaker never thought spending one night with U.S. Marshal Clayton Caldwell would put them in the crosshairs of a killer. Connected to a protective custody case gone awry, they are both attacked, leaving Clayton with a damaging case of amnesia and forcing Lenora to go on the run. After taking a bullet to save her life, Clayton is unable to remember Lenora or that he's the father of her baby. But the moment he tracks her down, it's clear the attraction is still there.

It was a chance for a new beginning and a better life for a wagon train of hopefuls leaving the war-torn South to relocate in Kansas. Unfortunately, new enemies and old habits die hard, and the truth can come to mean very little. Out-manned and out-gunned, Ruben, Marion, and Homer put their lives on the line as they saddle up and fight for what is right on the Glory Trail.

Tex Larimee is a grizzled Arizona sheriff who’s leaving the deserts of Cactus County behind, blazing a trail east to mix it up with The Slickers in the canyons of Manhattan. Tex’s welcome to New York is a rude one. Robbed of his cash, gun and badge, he’s locked in a room in back of a run-down bar. Breaking out of the bar, he goes looking for his best friend...only to find him dead, his throat cut. And the cops accuse Tex of committing the murder.

Ranger Burrack and Federal Marshal Summers must battle Arizona regulator Morgan Waite and his band of vigilantes. When Burrack and Summers apprehend Cold Devil's saloon owner Jack Spain, Spain offers $10,000 to anyone who frees him. Getting wind of Spain's reward, Waite and his posse bushwhack the lawmen and leave them for dead in a terrifying landslide. But blazing gunfire will soon heat up the town of Cold Devil.

Jason Crow, double amputee and Vietnam War vet, has good reason to dislike the retired officer who bad-mouthed Jason's father and his African American business partner. But when Bartholomew calls late one night with a mysterious request that Jason come by his house, then turns up dead, Jason has to set his feelings aside. Clyde Burker, his old police nemesis and now head of the homicide division, doesn't want Jason meddling in yet another murder investigation, but Jason won't stay on the sidelines when Burker points a finger at Jason's own loved ones.

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.

When Senator George Hearst taps Neville Stryker for another off-the-books job, it leads him straight to the gutted remains of the Mark Hopkins Mansion—once a crown jewel of Nob Hill, now a crime scene soaked in silence. The tenants, the Bosworth family, have vanished, their blood staining the marble, their bodies nowhere to be found. Locals whisper the place is cursed. Haunted. But Stryker knows better. Evil wears many masks, and not all of them are dead. Inside the mansion’s decaying splendor, strange things stir—phantoms of the past, secrets buried deep beneath velvet and stone.

Deputy Sheriff Nick Rogers found out small-town life meant adjusting to two things - gossips and Laney Cavanaugh. And neither was much help in solving a bridal shower murder. Some days it appeared like everyone in Whitehorse had a secret - including their new lawman. And falling for Laney wasn’t a good way to maintain a low profile. Nick might have been new to Whitehorse, but he wasn’t above getting his hands dirty.

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.

With her ex-husband, Ted, working nearby in an adjoining county, Kate Fox is eager to prove she’s the better sheriff. But when the less-than-popular ex-foreman of a local ranch is found dead, Kate gets the opportunity she’s been looking for. As it turns out, the case hits a little too close to home. The dead man’s body is discovered in a truck that belongs to Kate’s brother Jeremy - and he's missing. Evidence left at the crime scene leads Ted to suspect the ranch’s new foreman, but Kate isn’t convinced he’s responsible for the crime.

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.

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.

Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack is a predator lying in wait. He's undercover as an outlaw to infiltrate a pair of vicious border gangs and bring them down. This mission has already had its share of casualties, and if Burrack has his say, there will be more. A cloud of dust rises as four men ride toward the Twisted Hills. The only thing between them and certain death at the hands of the Apaches is Sam, who also wants those men dead.

Clinching is the technique used to bend a driven horseshoe nail to hold the shoe to a hoof. Rainy Dale is The Clincher, a 20-something high school-dropout turned farrier (horseshoer) who is haunted by a secret she carries. Estranged from her California D-list actress momma and her ranch hand Texas daddy, she tracked down her childhood horse in small-town Oregon - a land full of cowboys and their horses - then stayed to build a life with her tools, steel, and forge. She’s sleeping in a garage and trying not to fall for her landlord, the hapless and hopeful chef, Guy.

After fastball phenom Prospero Stark's baseball career craters in a Mexican jail, he retreats to a trailer park in the scorching Arizona desert. He lives in peaceful anonymity with a collection of colorful outcasts until someone leaves his former catcher's severed hand on his doorstep. Beautiful, hard-living reporter Roxanne Santa Cruz, who keeps a .380 Colt and a bottle of Chivas in her car, joins Stark to help him uncover his friend's fate, a dangerous pursuit that pits them against a ruthless gang of drug-dealing killers.

Big for his age, young and impressionable drifter Charlie Chilton is taken in by the gruff leader of a gang of small-time crooks and ne'er do wells who sees something of himself in kindly, wayward Charlie. But Grady Haskell, ambitious ruffian with a shady past, soon joins the gang, convincing Charlie's friends to pursue a big score. Charlie fails to thwart the crime, and the heist turns bloody. As the only gang member caught alive, Big Charlie will soon swing for the crimes. He makes a daring escape, determined to track down Haskell and the gang and prove his innocence.