Pima Series

Murder, arson, robbery, rape, and kidnapping are alive and well in Tucson, Arizona during the blistering hot summer of 1894. Are they the result of several unrelated acts or the work of one criminal mastermind? Pima Gallagher, a detective for the Southern Pacific Railroad, must try to keep his landlady’s eleven-year-old daughter, Scout, out of trouble while he follows clue after clue, until he ferrets out the real architect of evil from a mass of false trails and confusion.

A body falls off a train during a heavy downpour near Tucson, Arizona in late January of 1895. As the rain ends, the wagons of a traveling medicine show arrive in town with performers to entertain and a doctor of questionable credentials to peddle his wares. Pima Gallagher, a detective for the Southern Pacific Railroad, assisted, or at least she thinks so, by Scout Walker, his eleven-year-old stepdaughter, try to learn the identity of the corpse and whether its sudden appearance has anything to do with the nearly simultaneous arrival of Dr. Blenheim’s show. Meanwhile, Pima’s brother and sister, back in his home state of Mississippi, are causing him a great deal of concern with their letters about brother Jefferson’s deteriorating health. Eventually things come to a satisfactory conclusion, but not before more murder and mayhem manage to put Pima and Scout in fear for their lives in the mountains and desert areas between Tucson and Phoenix.

What could be more fun than a deer hunting trip to the mountains near Prescott, Arizona in November, 1895? At least it seems that way to Southern Pacific Railroad Detective Pima Gallagher, his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Scout Walker, and several other family members and friends until one of the group ends up with a knife in the back. Complicating matters are a howling blizzard and the sudden appearance of three murdering outlaws. With Pima slogging through the snow chasing outlaws and Scout hot on Pima’s trail things go from bad to worse until Pima and Scout’s survival hangs by a thread. Back home in Tucson with the original murder unsolved, Scout, afraid she’s going to be accused of the murder, runs away to a nearby mission to hide. Finally, everything is resolved but not until after a confession of murder from a most unexpected source.

Why is 13-year-old Scout Walker first hiding out in a mountaintop cave and then working in the copper mining town of Bisbee, Arizona disguised as a 16-year-old messenger boy during the autumn of 1896? Her stepfather, Southern Pacific Railroad Detective Pima Gallagher, is up to his ears in problems dealing with inexplicable rail shipments at the same time he’s busy searching for the runaway girl. Will Scout be able to maintain her disguise while remaining hidden from her family, or will she become just another victim of a mining accident before Pima is able to locate and rescue her?

Ellen Gallagher and Maria Gonzales, taken hostage at their Tucson dress shop by a hired killer, are hauled unceremoniously into Arizona’s most inhospitable desert. When Ellen’s husband, Southern Pacific Railroad Detective Pima Gallagher; her daughter, 14-year-old Scout Walker; and Maria’s husband, José, set out on the women’s trail they are nearly killed by a raging grass fire and a flash flood. Back in Tucson a wealthy couple from Mexico is targeted by a group of swindlers. When the Mexican man is murdered outside his home, confusion reigns as Pima and Scout compare the alibis of several suspects, any one of whom not only could have committed the crime but also had a good reason for doing so.

Southern Pacific Railroad Detective Pima Gallagher is asked by the Santa Fe Railroad to help track down who might be smuggling whiskey to the huge Navajo Reservation. When he suddenly disappears, Pima’s stepdaughter, fifteen-year-old Scout Walker, convinces her mother, Ellen, to travel with her to Winslow, Arizona to find Pima and help him in his search. At the same time, Scout decides to begin writing her memoirs with assistance from an English author they meet in Winslow, a waitress at the local Harvey House Restaurant is found murdered, Pima spends some time in the painted desert as the unhappy guest of a mysterious person, and a deserting soldier and an itinerant peddler become prime smuggling suspects. Everything comes to an end with a gun battle in the as-yet-unprotected Petrified Forest.