New River Blues: A Sarah Burke Mystery

Det. Sarah Burke gets a lesson about Arizona’s struggling construction industry and family greed in Gunn’s taut second police procedural to feature the Tucson cop (after 2008’s Cool in Tucson ).

When someone shoots arts patron Eloise Henderson to death along with her one-night stand, an ex-con-turned-stagehand, the obvious suspect is Eloise’s husband, with whom she’d been having marital problems. As Sarah and her team begin to investigate Eloise’s past, other possible suspects emerge. Meanwhile, caterer Zachariah Cristofou, prompted by society and theater gadfly “Madge,” concocts a scheme to frame a naïve stagehand, Pauly Eckhardt, for the murders, a plot that goes awry when one of the principals starts spilling the beans. Fans of Cool in Tucson will enjoy catching up with Sarah’s earnest efforts to make a real family for Denny, the daughter of her drug-addicted sister, and her relationship with fellow cop Will Dietz. (May)