I’m still clawing my way out of my respiratory infection, and so have been reading in pretty long stretches, concentrating on Jon Talton’s interesting David Mapstone mysteries. I have to confess I don’t love the books as much as I did, but I haven’t ditched the author yet.

Arizona Dreams finds our hero, Arizona “sheriff’s historian” David Mapstone, getting a visit from a woman who claims to be a former student of his (though he doesn’t remember her) from his teaching days. She gives him a map that’s supposed to lead to the desert grave of a murder victim. But that’s not what he finds at all…

Meanwhile, David’s wife Lindsey, also a deputy, is investigating a series of ice pick murders. David will get involved with that investigation too.

Cactus Heart is prequel, set back before the turn of the millennium, before David and Lindsey got together. In hot pursuit of a couple of criminals, David and the sheriff stumble on an old crypt in an abandoned building. Inside the crypt are two small skeletons – the skeletons of children. David’s investigation will lead him to the old crimes of one of the county’s most powerful families.

The stories remain well-written and interesting. I am cooling to the author because, in spite of the anti-woke opinions David Mapstone expresses in regard to his academic career, some of his other views bother me. David describes himself as a Goldwater libertarian, but a Greenie in terms of land development (fair enough; the southwest is certainly overdeveloped). He’s also not interested in a strong border. In these books, anyone who believes in border enforcement is uniformly portrayed as a racist. These books, it should be noted, were written before the borders were completely opened during the Biden administration, and all the human suffering that caused. It looks kind of dumb in retrospect, to me at least.

Still, the books maintain my interest. Cautions for language and sex scenes, which sometimes seem to me a little more detailed than necessary.