Arizona Dreams: A David Mapstone Mystery (2006)

Book Info

Author

Jon Talton

Genre

Fiction

Series

David Mapstone Mystery

Rating

3.78 of 5 Votes: 5

Your rating

ISBN

1590583183 (ISBN13: 9781590583180)

Language

English

Publisher

poisoned pen press

Shops

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble

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About book Arizona Dreams: A David Mapstone Mystery (2006)

This one ends on a very bitter note. Surprisingly so. David Mapstone is approached by a former student who discovered a letter written by her father before he died confessing to killing someone in 1966. The letter gives directions on how to find the body but doesn't say who the dead man was. But no one is who they seem in this story. There are lies and secrets on lies and secrets. I didn't realize how personal all those lies and secrets were to the author until the end. If I were someone who paid attention to local news (the book is set in Phoenix where I live) I'm sure I'd know right away what actual corruption and shenanigans were being written about in this book of fiction. I'm not a native and when I moved here reluctantly in 1998 the governor was being charged with corruption, making me a cynic from the beginning. The author didn't let the governor's downfall ruin his positive feelings for several more years since this book wasn't published until 2006. Since then there have been more and more examples of public officials being less than ethical and upstanding. I hope the author can recover some of his love for the city since he was helping me connect to it on a deeper level than hating the summers and the sprawl and its homogenous blandness.

I thought this book was interesting but confusing. I am interested in Arizona history and stories but when I checked it out I didn't realize it was more of a grownup book and it was hard to understand parts of it. It takes place in Phoenix and is about a sheriff's deputy who used to be a history professor. He is married to another sheriff's deputy and there is a man murdered in their neighborhood by being stabbed in the head with an ice pick. And a woman who was one of his students when he was a professor brings him a letter from her father before he died where he confesses to killing someone and burying him in the desert. So the deputy, David Mapstone has to try to figure out the murder in his neighborhood and there are some other murders that happen also that he has to solve. They are related because of some land out in the desert that is called Arizona Dreams, where houses were going to be built. I would probably recommend this book to someone who is interested in Arizona history and someone who has lived in Phoenix. I wouldn't recommend it for teenagers.

Do You like book Arizona Dreams: A David Mapstone Mystery (2006)?

Still enjoying this series. It is interesting to read about how Phoenix has changed in the last 30-40 years (when I lived there). The author goes back even further and tells a lot of the history and how the city has changed from farm land to the large city that is filled with people, yet has no industry that would enable the city to sustain itself. And still, the developers keep expanding, keep building, while the temperature goes up, and the water sources decline.This is a mystery (fiction) series, but there's a lot of history and background included.
—Terri