BRANDON WALKER & J.P. BEAUMONT JOIN FORCES FOR THE FIRST TIME

Years ago, Amos Warren, a prospector, was gunned down out in the desert and Sheriff Brandon Walker made the arrest in the case. Now, the retired Walker is called in when the alleged killer, John Lassiter, refuses to accept a plea deal that would release him from prison with time served. Lassiter wants Brandon and The Last Chance to find Amos's "real" killer and clear his name.

Sixteen hundred miles to the north in Seattle, J.P. Beaumont is at loose ends after the Special Homicide Investigation Team, affectionately known as S.H.I.T., has been unexpectedly and completely disbanded. When Brandon discovers that there are links between Lassiter’s case and an unsolved case in Seattle, he comes to Beau for help.

Those two cases suddenly become hot when two young boys from the reservation, one of them with close ties to the Walker family, go missing. Can two seasoned cops, working together, decipher the missing pieces in time to keep them alive?

Book number five in the Walker Family books finds Brandon Walker joining forces with J.P. Beaumont to solve two long cold cases at both ends of the road, Tucson and Seattle. Decades earlier, Brandon arrested Big Bad John Lassiter and sent him to prison for the murder of Lassiter’s one time friend, Amos Warren. Now, after decades in prison, Lassiter has asked Brandon for help in finding Warren’s “real killer.” When Brandon learns that one of the witnesses in the Warren homicide was himself murdered in Seattle in the 1980s, Brandon knows who to call for help.

This book gave me a chance to return to the legends and lore of the Tohono O’odham people. It gave me a chance to visit once again with a parade of characters that span centuries. Understanding Woman and the blind medicine man, Looks at Nothing, are from the 1880s. In Dance of the Bones, you meet Understanding Woman’s great, great, great grandson, Gabe Ortiz, a disaffected teenager in the 21st century. I love these characters—even though they’re all products of my imagination or maybe, because of that—and it was wonderful to have a chance to encounter them again and see what they’ve been up to during the years they’ve been out of my sight.

Because that’s the interesting thing about fictional characters. Just because I’m not paying attention to them doesn’t mean they’re not going on with their lives.

JAJ