I haven’t been to Arizona since I was 12 years old. But as a child, we went every summer.
Reading Steven Cooper’s crime mystery series, including Desert Remains, Dig Your Grave, and Valley of Shadows, I was transported back to the dry desert heat and running around in xeriscaped yards of rocks and cacti, so strange compared to the lush, soft grass and pine trees of back home in Georgia.
We visited the Grand Canyon, drove through the Petrified Forest, rode in the Pink Jeep (those who know, know), and visited countless Native American cultural and heritage sites. Unlike Cooper’s books, though, there were no psychics and (thank goodness!) no serial killers.
In Cooper’s Arizona, there is always a case waiting to be solved among the “rugged, majestic landscape of the Valley of the Sun.”
Homicide detective Alex Mills is a conscientious and thorough investigator, if a little unorthodox.
Whether he’s tracking a serial killer in the Arizona mountains, investigating the deaths of Phoenix CEOs, or uncovering the murder of an art-collecting heiress, Detective Mills relies on the advice and guidance of his friend and reluctant psychic, Gus Parker.
In a world of Long Island mediums, Parker is the real deal. His visions might be murky, but they always mean something.
That’s why Mills needs and trusts Parker’s help.
In their first case together, Desert Remains, a killer leaves his victims’ bodies and taunting clues in the form of petroglyphs on the desert rocks and caves surrounding Phoenix.
Parker is brought to the crime scenes; he sees visions of a house on fire and a screaming child.
But what does it mean?
The next murder could happen anywhere.
In their second case, Dig Your Grave, Mills and Parker investigate a killer who leaves his victims’ bodies in open graves in the city’s most wealthy cemeteries.
Just as the investigation heats up, Parker receives ominous threats from a mysterious source. There are nefarious secrets hiding in the shadows of the valley’s most well-heeled neighborhoods and some of their most prominent residents have the most to fear.
Together for a third time in Valley of Shadows, Mills and Parker investigate the death of wealthy socialite Viveca Canning and her missing Dali masterpiece. It’s an art caper wrapped in a murder mystery. The Valley of the Sun becomes a valley of shadows, where everyone has something to hide, and the truth lies in a labyrinth of tunnels and dungeons beneath the city of Phoenix.
Cooper’s style is, at once, scorching and wry.
He deftly and seamlessly mixes thrills and chills with snark and wit.
There’s good and evil, love and despair, compassion, deceit and danger. The action swerves around twists and turns and collides with a cast of characters you will not soon forget.
Cooper will be Georgia Writers Museum’s Meet the Author presenter on Sept. 12, beginning at 7 p.m. with doors open half an hour earlier.
Admission is $45 ($40 each for two more tickets) or $200 for a table of six (a savings of $40). The event will feature heavy hors d’oeuvres and a full bar. Following his presentation, Cooper will be signing copies of his books.
Sign up for this great event and come prepared for an evening of surprises.
-Contributed by Melissa Swindell, executive director of Georgia Writers Museum