F. HAVILL, STEVEN Knihy

The morning after his 87th birthday, former Posadas County sheriff Bill Gastner drives past a couple of vehicles stopped on the highway shoulder. It's not an unusual sight: a sheriff's patrol unit, emergency lights ablaze, pulled in behind a pickup truck. The female deputy hasn't radioed for backup. But there's something about the scene makes him feel uneasy. The next day, Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman is called to a disturbing roadside scene, with the same truck. But this time, its occupant's dead body is stabbed through the chest and a second corpse beside the car. What happened to the two men? And what were the dead man and the deputy discussing on the previous day?

A Posadas County Sheriffs Department Dispatcher sticks a Post-It note on an incident report. What he meant to write was, Not for news, hoping that the newspaper reporter who drops into the Sheriffs Office each morning would ignore the report. But what he unintentionally wrote was, Note for news, and so the arrest of Quentin Torrez, nephew of Posadas Sheriff Robert Torrez, goes public. And Quentin, who has applied for a job with the NightZone excursion narrow gauge railroad, loses any chance at employment. Shortly thereafter, a night-time drive-by shooting riddles the front of the newspaper office--and despite the late hour, two of the

Good cops have no use for coincidence When a driver slams his pickup truck--twice--into a tandem bike being ridden by Carlos Guzman and his fiancée, Tasha, in Briones, California, it's more than a simple hit-and-run; the driver clearly intended to harm them. Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman gets the call with the news of her son's accident and wastes no time racing to his side. She is greeted by Police Captain Eddie Mitchell, formerly of Posadas County, who allows Estelle to "consult" on the investigation--but only to a point. While Carlos struggles with critical injuries, an employee at the bike shop where Carlos bought the tandem is found shot dead in a dumpster--the same man who had borrowed the truck that mowed down Carlos and Tasha. The local cops aren't convinced there's any connection between the two crimes. Not a believer in coincidence, Estelle pursues every possible angle with a cop's determination to solve the case, and a mother's resolve to keep her son safe at any cost.