Steven F Havill

When a county employee is found shot to death in broad daylight while sitting in his county road grader, Undersheriff Bill Gastner is faced with puzzling questions. The simplest explanation - that an errant bullet from a careless target shooter's rifle blew out Larry Zipoli's brains - is soon discarded. The fatal bullet shows no rifling marks, and investigation reveals that the shooter walked directly toward the road grader, in full view of the victim...

Savvy storytelling infused with a spicy Southwestern setting. "Not only does Havill offer a melancholy reinterpretation of that grand western myth of the slow-talking, fast-thinking lawman, he also writes crisp, marvelously detailed police procedurals in which a mix of technical know-how and informed common sense gets things done."—Booklist Bill Gastner is going crazy recuperating from heart surgery. Dreaming of green chili, he's rescued by a...

"Gastner's capabilities are plausible for a septuagenarian, and Havill peoples the book with believable characters." —Publishers Weekly STARRED review What do you do when you inherit $330 million after taxes? If you're New Mexico rancher Miles Waddell, you build a dream. Waddell's dream is NightZone, an astronomy-based theme park complete with giant radio telescope, a bank of smaller scopes linked to a theater, five-star dining in a restaurant...

Next book in the Posadas County Mystery Series Posadas County Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman has a lot on her plate-but when her family is threatened by a criminal underworld, she'll stop at nothing to protect her own Gifted fifteen-year-old Francisco Guzman has become an internationally renowned concert pianist, touring the world under the auspices of his music conservatory. That gives his mother, Posadas County Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman,...

A well seasoned sixty-nine, Sheriff Bill Gastner knows his Posadas, New Mexico, territory as well as he understands the foibles of the human condition. So when a backhoe crushes a man to death, it's more instinct than fact that leaves him feeling there's more to this "accident" than meets the eye. Adding to his problems, anonymous letters charging his best deputy, Tom Pasquale, with hustling Mexican nationals for cash are being dispatched around town....

Next book in the Posadas County Mystery Series "If you haven't yet discovered these wonderful mysteries, you are in for a treat!"—Anne Hillerman, New York Times bestselling author One blizzardy New Mexico night, Posadas County Deputy Pasquale picks up a toddler abandoned along the shoulder of State 56… And as more disturbing cases pile up, the Sheriff's Department find themselves caught in a dangerous web of deceit Deputy Pasquale is horrified,...

Sheriff Estelle is called to teenager Carmen Acosta's home. When she arrives, Carmen's father, Freddie, is in police custody and an unconscious Carmen is on the way to the hospital "beat to a pulp." There has been a fight over a boy, but it is hard to believe that the also young Deena is responsible. Estelle has many other suspects to choose from, since the Acosta family holds the record for the number of domestic violence calls the police have received....

"Havill...quietly continues a project virtually unique in detective fiction: anchoring his tales of crime and punishment as closely as possible in the rhythms of small-town friends, routines, and calamities." --Kirkus Reviews Rolling stone Wesley Crocker seems a harmless enough free spirit when Posadas County Undersheriff Bill Gastner offers him a lift on the road and spots him a free dinner. Crocker beds down for the night with his gear on the high-school...

Another Posadas County mystery with Estelle Reyes-Guzman as the undersheriff, but with the ever more popular Bill Gastner peering out of the wings to which he dispatched himself upon retirement. Estelle's new job continues to be far from easy, and now she is faced the death of a young woman on a motorcycle—a death that could have been caused by improper driving from one of the county's traffic officers when he tried to stop her for speeding. But...

1892: Busy stitching and bandaging lumberjacks' injuries, young Dr. Thomas Parks has no idea that his worst enemy is lurking in the sleepy village of Port McKinney. When one of the working girls at the Clarissa Hotel is brought to the Clinic desperately ill, Thomas' newly arrived associate wastes no time in making the diagnosis - Asian Cholera has somehow found this backwater near Puget Sound. The cholera strikes viciously and kills in days, sometimes...