Jim Stanton Mysteries Series

When retired journalist Jim Stanton learns of the death of long-lost friend Mickey Buchanan, he is drawn into what he thinks is a nostalgic visit to his roots in Michigan’s northern lower peninsula. In reality, this trip forces him to exercise his best traits as an investigative reporter while relying on training he learned as a covert warrior during the Vietnam War to stay alive. Stanton’s life following his military service has been a tribute to thought over violence; reflection over action. For 35 years he has known that his mental makeup was no match for his talents for military work. He has lived his life believing his lacked the toughness that makes a successful soldier. At the time of his death, Buchanan is putting together his final big deal of his business career – Penny Point on Copper Creek, a 700-plus-acre residential golf and outdoor activity development for the truly wealthy in the rustic Manistee River Valley of Michigan. The village of Mineral Springs is to be home to this legacy to Buchanan’s business acumen and daring entreprenuerism. Led by the local newspaper’s editorials, not everyone in Mineral Springs is excited by the prospect of Buchanan’s development. Owner and publisher Janice Coldwell insists that the project will add nothing to the quality of life in their village but will escalate property prices – along with all other costs of living there – to the point of excluding most of the current working class residents who make up the community. Stanton arrives in Mineral Valley and discovers reported facts about Buchanan’s death in complete discord with the core traits he knew of his old friend. His initial questions cause police to reopen the official inquiry. He and Coldwell meet and find themselves instantly attracted to each other. For him it’s the first female attraction since his wife’s death six years ago; for her it is the first time her drive to build her newspaper has been diverted even slightly by her attraction to a man. Stanton encourages Coldwell and her newspaper staff to look deeply into the Penny Point project. They learn that the project is now being managed by a company called Next Cool Place, LLC which is run by Buchanan’s widow, Charlotte. As the newspaper’s coverage closes in on Next Cool Place principals, Stanton is shocked by what appear to be vicious and seemingly “over-the-top” reactions. A reporter on Coldwell’s staff is savagely beaten after spending a day in the Kalkaska County courthouse researching property dealings and purchase prices relating to Mineral Valley and Copper Creek. These attacks lead the official inquiry to close in further on the principals of the Next Cool Place who in turn escalate their reactions. Using the training from his military past, Stanton survives an attack in his Oregon home in a scene that provides him a clear insight into the ruthless nature of his adversaries. He then arranges around-the-clock protection for Coldwell, and as a result she barely escapes an attempt to kill her that ends in burning down her Mineral Valley home. The police become fully engaged after a deadly shoot-out on the banks of Copper Creek which again tests Stanton’s decades-old training and leaves a police detective critically wounded. The two journalists continue their pursuit of the story while they fall in love. Doggedly following interview after interview, they finally unravel the exact nature of Buchanan’s genius and the plot that ended his life. The story climaxes in a confrontation with Charlotte where Coldwell gives Stanton a new definition of courage and grit. The final scene is one of warmth and reflection even as Stanton and Coldwell recognize the strain that their long-distance relationship will put on their love in the future.

In this, the second Jim Stanton Mystery, the retired community journalist is confronted by two mysteries, one trivial, the other fatal, but in the end they combine to remind him that even in perfect stories, everything doesn't always "work out" for all concerned. Lucja Rantford, matriarch of the James Ranch and Sheep Co., near Pendleton, Oregon, goes missing as the city prepares to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its rodeo. As Stanton shows off his city and its rodeo the Lawton family visiting from Michigan they take in the Round-Up museum where one of the children in the family points out the resemblance of a man in a 1933 photo to Stanton. Stanton assures everyone that to his knowledge no other Stanton had lived in Pendleton, but neighbor Jack Nelson, a retired soil scientist and avid local historian, launches a massive search to determine the identity of the person in the photo. Another friend, Randall Albright, introduces Stanton to Able James, Lucja's grandson, and recruits the journalist to assist the young man in solving her mystery. The two investigations lead Stanton into a maze of contradictions over land use laws, future development and historical treasures.

When state high school track champion Suzanne Czarnopias goes missing her home town is shocked, but as the police find no clues to her fate, that shock turns to anger, first at the Lake City, New York, police, and then, when their newspaper prints letters to the editor claiming to be from the culprit, that anger and fear focuses on the new managing editor, Jim Stanton. And as the community questions the newspaper’s reporting, and rumors about the possibility of Stanton’s role in the story make their way through the town, the letter writer threatens to make Stanton’s daughter the next victim if he fails to pursue the story. Relying on his military training for the first time as a civilian, Stanton readies himself for his first test as an investigator – with everything near and dear to him on the line.

In this, his third mystery, retired community journalist Jim Stanton comes face to face with something that had always been missing from his character – anger that boils down to hate. Trained as a young man by the U.S. Navy to be one of a select group of covert warriors, Stanton walked away from that life at his first opportunity, recognizing that the anger that fueled his teammates was absent from his makeup. Now, forty years later, a chain of events sees him attacked and severely injured, returned to the bliss of a newlywed, and then into the depths of despair. These events ignite in him an anger he has never known. That anger spawns in a search for a kidnapped couple aboard their yacht, and then grows into a burning hate at the overt ruthlessness of the kidnappers. Driven by that anger and armed with unending curiosity, Stanton and his new bride, Jan, chase answers from Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and the Haida Quaii or “Archipelago of the North,” to Washington and back to Oregon in a maddening search that brings them to the brink of their abilities. At that brink Stanton must peer into the abyss, and decide if he’s going to submit to his anger or remain true to the man he has always tried to be. As the final mystery of his career unravels, Jim and Jan wonder if the rough sea they’ve been navigating will ever be calm again. In the end they find answers all of the questions they knew to ask, and some they never dreamed of asking...

Wins and losses... When Ed Sweet loses his job of 35 years it is devastating. Two years later, when he wins the American Tribute Sweepstakes Grand Prize worth millions of dollars, everything seems to be coming up roses. When Ed starts receiving calls threatening his seven grand-children, he turns to his high school hero, Jim Stanton, because he knows Jim is always a winner. When Jim and his wife, Jan, then hurry to the northern Missouri town of Elliotsville they find a town still reeling from the loss of its foremost private-sector employer. When the Stantons agree to a cross-country marathon of interviewing the Sweet children to find which one of them might be linked to the threats, they find extraordinary people living extraordinary lives – winners all. When the Sweets call all their children home, gathering all the grandchildren under the watchful eye of their parents and the FBI, the wins and losses start piling up forcing everyone concerned into a flurry of discovery and action that leads to a new, full understanding of what winning and losing really mean.

Encoding... In this, the 7th Jim Stanton Mystery, the retired journalist is confronted with deciphering a maze of codes, ultimately requiring him to evaluate his personal code of ethics. A long-time friend has gone missing. Jim has been asked to help in a search to find the man. What follows is a baffling search that takes Jim inside a Phoenix crime family. From there the trail leads to Las Vegas, Silicon Valley, and finally to San Jose where his unique talent for asking the right questions entangles him in a 20-year-old cold case. And still no closer to finding his friend. When his search finally brings his friend’s fate into clear focus, Jim finds that codes of conduct are as varied as the people who carry them, and, in the final analysis, he understands once and for all that all codes matter.

In this, the 6th Jim Stanton mystery, Janice Coldwell Stanton decides to attend her high school class reunion with takes the Stantons back to Jan’s tiny hometown of Stoney, Michigan. Jan has become a poised, beautiful, and successful business woman, but to her classmates and the rest of the residents in her hometown, she would be remembered as a tall, skinny, frumpy, piano-playing accompanist. Stoney High School will cease to exist after this school year, and with its closure so will end the town’s annual Homecoming Alumni Reunion tradition. While she has never attended a class reunion in the past, Jan sees this as the final opportunity to show off her husband and the woman she’s become. Jim has never been to a class reunion, either, but agrees to accompany his wife as long as he can use the trip to Northern Michigan to introduce his bird dog, Judy, to woodcock, a game bird that will be all new to her nose. That decision lands the Stantons squarely in the middle of a secret that has gone undiscovered for more than forty years. Class reunions bring high school year books out of boxes all across America every year as alumni look for familiar faces and names that they’ll rediscover. Jan’s yearbooks were lost in a house fire when she first met Jim; lacking that book sends her to the local historical museum. What she finds there starts her wondering about the fate of classmates who have lost all connection to the town and the school. That wondering becomes more intense when Jim witnesses an exchange between two men who should have been strangers, and that fuels the pair of retired journalists to look even deeper into Stoney’s past. As their investigation gains traction, they inevitably come face to face with “Fear at First Glance.”