This Western Mystery Series Is an Oasis in the Desert

Fans of the Bill Gastner Mystery Series will be delighted to reconnect with former deputy Estelle Reyes-Guzman in this new series. Estelle returns to Posadas County after following her surgeon husband to cold Minnesota. The department welcomes her back under new sheriff Bobby Torrez.

But don’t worry. Bill Gastner is still around—he’s just a State Livestock Inspector. 

As Estelle investigates why bodies are turning up in the desert, Bill tracks down illegal livestock brought over the border. But the truth of these crimes falls on Estelle, a burden she has to bear through the thrilling and heartbreaking climax. 

Returning as undersheriff hasn’t been easy. And the job keeps demanding more from Estelle. This time, the case is the death of a young woman on a motorcycle

 A death that may have been caused by one of the county’s traffic officers improperly driving. But the more Estelle investigates, the more troubling the case becomes.

Former sheriff Bill Gastner is there to help, but leaning on him too much could derail Estelle and her investigation. 

When a notion store in Posadas County starts selling hatpins, no one expected that they would quickly become popular with the local middle school girls. No one has worn hatpins for decades.

But when Undersheriff Estelle is called to the home of teenage Carmen Acosta, she quickly learns of the trend. 

Carmen was beaten and left for dead, and a sharpened hatpin was found in the inseam of Deena’s jeans. The Acosta family is adamant Deena is at fault, but they have more domestic violence calls than anyone in the town.

It’s up to Estelle to find the truth before anyone else gets hurt. 

As undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman settles in for a quiet Christmas Eve, her husband is called into the hospital. The Chief of Police has a heart attack while confronting car thieves. He collapsed, they took his car, with only an out-of-town couple as witnesses. And their story isn’t adding up. 

To make matters worse, the Sheriff has a pulmonary embolism Christmas morning, a deputy’s fiancé is murdered Christmas afternoon, and former Sheriff Bill Gastner is viciously attacked Christmas night.

Estelle has to manage criminal reports with medical reports, and the longer she takes, the more time the criminals have to get away. 

Just north of Posadas County, Cat Mesa is hosting the first annual Posadas 100, a bicycle race that should bring in a plethora of tourists and competitors. But undersheriff Estelle has more to deal with than rowdy racegoers.

Someone has been flying Jerry Turner’s Cessna and returning it to the airport hangar. Drug dogs can’t detect illegal substances as the reason. But when a racer dies and it doesn’t seem like an accident, ties to the darker side of Mexico emerge.

Estelle has to untangle the truth before it threatens their quiet town and things go violently out of control. 

As the Sheriff continues to recover from his pulmonary embolism, Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman is busier than ever. After another long day, Estelle’s cell phone rings as she pulls into her driveway. 

 truck ran off the road and there’s a body. Only, it doesn’t look like an accident. And there’s a single footprint on the man’s body. But when the autopsy makes things even more muddled, Estelle has more questions than answers.

Questions she has to answer if she wants to avoid more problems. 

Former Sheriff Bill Gastner is enjoying a quiet day on his friend’s ranch. Until the horses spook and Bill has to take an injured cowpuncher to meet an ambulance.

Meanwhile, his friend decides to eat lunch without him. But after taking a few bites, he dies of an apparent heart attack. Only, things look fishy. The cattle Bill counted on the ranch is wandering down a highway, with the cowpuncher and his truck is missing.

Suddenly stuck in the middle of two complicated investigations, Bill is facing one of the biggest challenges of his career. 

A teenager get injured in the most unexpected way: a rattlesnake fang in the eye. But that’s just the start of Undersheriff Estelle’s problems. The injured teens brother is found dead after going missing.

His death appears to be an accident caused by his ATV cartwheeling with him on it. What catches Estelle’s attention though is what the teen found right before he died.

A discovery that takes Estelle and former Sheriff to a case they faced five years ago and never solved. Now, they have to find a murderer who might be closer than they ever realized. 

After rancher Miles Waddell inherits several hundred million dollars, he pursues his dream of opening an astronomy-based theme park aptly named NightZone.

But when two eco-terrorists take a chainsaw to the power lines, his dream starts to turn into a nightmare. One of the men dies, and the other flees in their car only to murder the police officer who tries to stop him.

Hours later, retired Sheriff Bill Gaston finds himself under investigation instead of helping the officers pursue the real criminals. 

Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s fifteen-year-old is a gifted pianist. His international renown has him heading out for a world tour.

The nearby crime has Estelle worried, especially when one of his tour stops is a crime-ridden city that could easily make him a target. 

Add a long-lost uncle who suddenly wants to reconnect with the family who never knew he existed and the corpses that seem to follow him, and Estelle has her hands full.  

Between the success of NightZone and the hot streak of the girls’ volleyball team, things are looking up for Posadas County.

But when the volleyball Coach is gunned down in the girls' shower room, a former volleyball star disappears after locking her baby in her car, and graffiti spreads through NightZone’s property.

Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman has to call on former Sheriff Bill Gastner to help her untangle all these seemingly unrelated crimes. 

The twelfth book in the Posadas County Mystery series takes us back in time to when Bill Gastner was the Undersheriff and current Sheriff Bobby Torrez was a rookie.

It’s 1986, and Gastner is called to a deadly accident in the middle of the night. Torrez is the first to join him on the scene only to discover two of the victims are his younger brother and sister.

But why were these teens driving so fast? With three teens dead and one missing, it’s up to Gastner to unravel the truth. 

A toddler is left on the side of a highway, a range tech goes missing, a local man is arrested, and a brutal murder is discovered in the nearby border town.

It’s a dreary holiday season for Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman and the Sheriff’s Department. As she tries to juggle family obligations with her police duties, the tangles of seemingly small lies become knotted even tighter.

Can they exact justice and enjoy the holidays? Or will both prove too elusive for the department? 

NightZone has brought a lot of eco-friendly success to the area. So when a new developer buys the land next door and plans to open a project that threatens its success, the locals get nervous.

But then the developer is found dead and someone shoots up a newsroom. Sheriff Bobby Torrez and Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman know the two are connected.

Now, they just have to figure out how.  

When a truck rams Carlos Guzman’s tandem bike in Briones, California, Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman rushes to his side.

It’s clear this was no accident. Someone wanted to hurt Carlos.

Luckily, the local Sheriff is from Posadas County and allows Estelle to assist on the case—to a point. But when an employee at the bike shop is shot dead, only Estelle believes it’s not a coincidence.

Motivated to keep her son safe, Estelle tracks every lead to solve the case. 

After his eighty-seventh birthday party, former Sheriff Bill Gastner drives past a truck pulled over on the side of the highway. The next morning, Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman is called back to the scene.

It’s the same truck, only this time, the driver is dead and there’s another body in the ditch. It’s up to Estelle to figure out who killed these men.

And her first clue is finding out what the deputy who first pulled them over might know.