The Corpse in the Cactus by Lonni Lees

Police Detective Maggie Reardon is alone again. Just when she thought she might have found Mr. Right her captain called her in and put the kibosh on the whole kit-and-caboodle. Rocco was, after all, a witness in the murder of the proprietor of the Mosaic Gallery, the case that she just solved.

Sure, she has blown her chance at romance, but Reardon was delighted to find out that Rocco was willing to place a hiatus on their budding romance until the case went to trial. Buoyed with the notion that someone was willing to wait for, her she set out on the next grisly discovery, the body of a man found discovered in the javelina pit at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

Always determined to send waves through the department, the newly minted female detective in the Tucson Police Department challenged the findings of the senior officer on duty, who wrote off the body as an accidental fall. When her leads show they had a victim with no identification, multiple state tag numbers in his trunk and no witnesses, she has her work cut out for her.

By the time she puts together the unidentified body with an apparent runaway, skulking in a cheap south-side motel, she is able to help solve not just a missing persons case but prove the cold-blooded killing of the corpse in the cactus.

Lees’ fact-filled little novellas, featuring Detective Maggie Reardon, are fast becoming a favorite read of mystery fans in the Old Pueblo she features, Tucson, Arizona.

Shadow of Doubt by Nancy Cole Silverman

KCHC, Tinsel town’s own radio station, awash with female broadcasters, made a living out of swapping Hollywood gossip. Not only does cub reporter, Carol Childs, have the ear of a very dishy FBI agent, Eric Landon, her current beau but she also lives next door to Samantha Millhouse, niece of top Hollywood agent, Pepper Millhouse, to whom she owes a lot of her industry leaked stories.

When Sam shows up in tears, announcing that Pepper has been found dead in her bath tub she takes the exclusive story on-air. But when Sam is arrested for the murder of her aunt, and her twin-sister Sarah positions herself to take over the agency and the inheritance, Carol begins to wonder what the real truth is and her investigative search unearths a series of mysterious deaths.

When she is warned by a Hollywood psychic that not only will there be more deaths but that her own life may be in danger, Carol has to find out who was really behind the deaths that are sweeping around the country’s movie making capital.

Silverman does an awesome job of creating multiple red herrings and leaves the reader guessing up to the final page. You’ll think twice before taking that next long soak in a tub after you read this toe-curling thriller.

Independance Day by Ben Coes - a review

A nuclear bomb has been sold by the Russian mob to renegade hacker, Cloud, who is out to avenge his parents’ death at the hands of the CIA two generations ago.

The bomb is spirited out of Russia on an old freighter and sets course for America to arrive on the Fourth of July to set off its own explosive light display on American soil, aiming to kill hundreds of thousands.

With all seven American agents taken out in the field of combat on Russian soil by Cloud, who has infiltrated the CIA databanks giving him an inside track on every move the American government makes. It is left to washed-up Secret Agent Dewey Andreas to handle the task even though the agency wants him in a clinic in Sedona, Arizona to be treated for PTSD.

Operating blind, in the field of play, with only three days left to discover the whereabouts of the missing bomb, Andreas sets in motion actions to locate Cloud by kidnapping his fiancé, the famous ballet dancer, Katya Basaeyev, and torturing her until Cloud confesses, if he can find him.

Working hand-in-hand with the young and powerful head of the Russian mob, Alexi Malnikov, the two strange bedfellows flush out the terrorist and race to save America from a fate worse than was served up on 9/11.

Coes keeps us guessing up until the last second as to whether or not they are