Cactus Heart

By Jon Talton

A PHOENIX COLD CASE: David Mapstone has returned to Phoenix, Arizona, the desert city he left behind a lifetime ago. The ex-cop, ex-history professor is working the police dept's cold case desk, unearthing long-buried secrets. And he's good at it: as an ex-historian Mapstone knows the past is never past, as an ex-cop he knows he can't trust anybody...

CACTUS HEART: Phoenix, a city built on the bones of its past, has just given up one of her longest-kept secrets. Walled up in a tunnel beneath an abandoned warehouse, the skeletons of two four-year-old twins are discovered, the victims in a notorious kidnapping case from the 1940s. But what starts as a tying-up-loose-ends case for David Mapstone quickly becomes something far more sinister.

As Mapstone delves further into the evidence, he discovers a complex web of secrets, lies, money and power. But with a very contemporary killer on the loose, he must untangle the truth – and fast – before they strike again...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781781850497

Jon Talton

Jon Talton is a fourth-generation Arizonan who grew up in the same neighbourhood that Mapstone calls home. He is the author of nine novels, including the Mapstone mysteries, The Pain Nurse and Deadline Man.

Reviews for Cactus Heart

[cknikka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another good read... prequel… its 1999 we get lots of back fill on the characters and there are still lots of twists and turns and explores some of the complex relationships we have with old friends and our relationships with the opposite sex. It looks again at Arizona history with some snapshots of how the state and the city were built. The opening line in the book…. “Throughout history, the desert has been a place of trail, penance, and hard-won revelation. God lives in the desert. But Satan does too. In the American West, conquistadors and cowboys were tested, and often broken, by the desert. Its vastness hid no cities of gold. Its implacable heat and drought were hostile to the white man’s crops and cattle. Even as the frontier disappeared, the Sonora Desert remained a wild and unknown place, the home of strange gods, a waterless world of danger and mystery. This is more fun stuff. It is a good stand alone book and a welcome addition to the series.