Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of Cactus Heart by Jon Talton. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
Cactus Heart by Jon Talton
A David Mapstone Mystery
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-352-3 (1590583523)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-352-4 (9781590593524)
Publication Date: May 2007
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from the publisher): This “prequel” to the David Mapstone mysteries takes place in 1999, when everything dot-com was making money, the Y2K bug was the greatest danger facing the world, and the good times seemed as if they would never end.
It was a time before David and Lindsey were together, before Mike Peralta was sherriff, and before David had rid himself of the sexy and mysterious Gretchen.
In Phoenix, it’s the sweet season and Christmas and the new millennium are only weeks away. But history professor David Mapstone, just hired by the Sheriff’s Office, still finds trouble, chasing a robber into an abandoned warehouse and discovering a gruesome crime from six decades ago.
Mapstone begins an investigation into a Depression-era kidnapping that transfixed Arizona and the nation: the disappearance of a cattle baron’s grandsons, their bodies never found. And although the kidnapper was caught and executed, Mapstone uncovers evidence that justice was far from done. But this is no history lesson. The cattle baron’s heirs now run a Fortune 500 company and wield far more clout than a former-professor-turned-deputy. When one of the heirs turns up dead, Mapstone knows his life may even be at risk.
Review: Jon Talton returns to the last months of 1999 as the setting for the fifth mystery in the David Mapstone series, Cactus Heart.
Mapstone has an interesting profession: a historian, working on a commission basis, for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department. He also has the rank of Deputy Sheriff with all the privileges and responsibilities that come with the title. When the bodies of two children are discovered sealed behind the wall of an abandoned warehouse in downtown Phoenix, Mapstone is drawn into a crime from 1941 in which the twin grandsons of a prominent Arizona businessman were kidnapped, their bodies never found ... until now. Though the kidnapper had been caught, tried, and executed, Mapstone orders some tests on the skeletal remains, the results of which lead him to believe the case is far from closed.
Cold case crimes are fascinating in many ways, and the one presented in Cactus Heart is at times riveting. Mapstone uses modern technology, from computerized databases to DNA testing, and combines it with handwritten police and medical records from decades earlier to piece together how those two boys came to be entombed in the warehouse. He also deftly negotiates overlapping jurisdictions in investigating the crime and skillfully handles the politically sensitive task of taking on a still powerful Arizona family.
Talton manages to integrate Mapstone's personal life, his strengths and weaknesses, his doubts and fears, into Cactus Heart without detracting from the overall story. (The title actually refers to Mapstone himself, not some aspect of the crime.) This not only creates a strong, complex protagonist that contrasts well with other characters but also enhances key elements of the plot.
The plot itself gets a little convoluted on occasion and there are a few too many convenient coincidences that allow Mapstone to wrap things up neatly in the end, but these minor faults don't lessen the appeal of this very good mystery.
Special thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of Cactus Heart for this review.
Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.
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