Winner of the Edgar Award: A letter tips off a Denver narcotics detective to a colossal smuggling ringOnce, Denver's small-time pushers sold nothing harder than dime bags of bad California grass. But in the last year, heroin has appeared on the streets of the Mile High City, and the police department has responded by forming a narcotics division. Detective Gabe Wager and his rookie partner spend their nights trailing dealers, making buys, and acquiring informants, ...

To get his agency off the ground, security expert Devlin Kirk takes a dangerous caseSabotage threatens the profits of industrial giant McAllister Enterprises. Twice already, accounting errors have forced the company to drop out of $100 million deals, and both times a competing firm, the Aegis Group, swooped in to take over. The CEO suspects industrial espionage, and the obvious suspect is division director Austin Haas, who declined a job offer from Aegis six months...

A forcibly retired marine investigates the disappearance of a young girlLieutenant-Colonel Jack Steele is too honest for Washington. If any other Marine Corps investigator had noticed a congressman's corruption, he might have kept his mouth shut. But Steele knows his ultimate duty and blows the whistle on a treasonous lawmaker, earning himself a pat on the back and a swift kick out the door. Steele returns to his hometown of San Diego, hoping for a quiet retirement...

Devlin investigates a missing Salvadoran's gruesome fateDevlin Kirk and his partner Bunchcroft are Denver's finest industrial security experts, even if Denver doesn't see it that way. Their last big case got them out of debt, but since then the well has been dry. Their firm is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy when Nestor Calamaro, a young illegal immigrant whose family is close to Bunch, disappears. Kirk can't afford any pro bono work, but Bunch talks him into th...

When a stripper is murdered, Gabe Wager turns the red-light district inside outMore than any other establishment on Denver's red-light strip, the Cinnamon Club has taken advantage of the new law allowing all-nude dancing. What was once confined to back rooms now takes center stage, and the activities in the club's private section grow ever more depraved. Annette Sheldon is the Cinnamon Club's rising star until her body is found dumped in an alley, eyes pecked out b...

Targeted by thugs, a wrestling impresario reaches out to an old friendWhen Otto Lidke got a tryout in pro football, he hired a lawyer friend named Jim Raiford to handle his contract. The negotiations were bungled, forcing both men into a career change. Trying to start a pro wrestling circuit in Denver, Lidke runs afoul of the national federation, which does everything it can—legal and otherwise—to stamp out his new venture. When shady business practices escalate in...

A botched coke bust forces Wager to go undercover for the first time in yearsFor six months, the Denver narcotics team and the DEA have built a case against a cocaine-dealing heavy named Farnsworth. When Detective Reitman makes the final buy, he runs a field test to make sure the package of powder he's just purchased is really cocaine. The test is positive, and the bust goes down. Afterwards, the DEA's lab says that Reitman was wrong—he'd just bought two and a half ...

Now working homicide, Wager lands a gruesome case in the botanic gardenHomicide cops are always suspicious of the drug enforcement division, so when ex-narcotics detective Gabe Wager arrives on the murder squad, his first assignment is the graveyard shift. His new commanding officer hopes that the late shift will keep Wager out of trouble, and give him a chance to learn the byzantine regulations that govern murder investigations. But two days later, a call comes in...

Kirk watches nervously as a new employee goes undercover with a drug ringThe employees at the Advantage Company have started to steal. They are angrier than they used to be, and also clumsier—accident reports have spiked. To Devlin Kirk, these are telltale signs of on-the-job drug abuse. Hired by Advantage to smash the drug ring that's sprung up inside its factory, Kirk sends his newest employee, earnest farm boy Chris Newman, to infiltrate the company. Newman sees ...

When a woman burns to death, Gabe Wager uncovers a nest of short-fuse fanaticsThe fire department finds her in the closet, knees clutched to her chest, body charred beyond recognition. At first they can't even tell that the corpse was a woman. Although the death appears accidental, they call in homicide detective Gabe Wager to make sure. Forensics identifies her as Pauline Tillotson, an FBI informant working from inside an environmentalist group with terrorist lean...

Two detectives take to the high seas after a sailor's death in a mystery that "succeeds in making life aboard a huge oil tanker both fascinating and scary" ( Publishers Weekly).The Rossi family received only a handful of letters after their son shipped out on the supertanker Aurora Victorious. The first dispatches were from Harold himself, describing the blend of tedium and excitement that defined life onboard the ship. The last communication came...

A tip about a murdered mob boss forces Gabe Wager to reopen a cold caseA year ago, Marco Scorvelli was murdered while picking up his morning paper. A sawed-off shotgun put a hole in his stomach, and streaked the inside of his sports coat with the mob boss's innards. As Scorvelli crawled towards his front door, the killer left the shotgun angled neatly on the sidewalk. No prints were recovered, and no headway was ever made on the case.Now a reliable underworl...