Genre: Book
Grade: A-
Notable People: Jon Talton
Title: Cactus Heart
Review: After four installments in his very fine David Mapstone series, Talton wrote a prequel, going back to the chaos of 1999 and the Y2K drama. This book provides a nice backdrop and history to the current in- progress series. As usual, Talton is focused on the criminal urbanization of the desert and Phoenix’s growth from sleepy 1950s hamlet to mega-giant snowbird fancy and developers’ dream. This one tells the story of a 60 year old murder (Mapstone is the erstwhile Deputy Sheriff in Maricopa County, who is also a PhD historian and works on very cold cases) of twin grandsons of one of the founding giants of Arizona. As usual the twist and turns are fabulous, the characters larger than life and the sex scenes are pretty dam vivid (the history Shamus is apparently a reluctant chic magnet). These books have steadily grown on me and I eagerly anticipate the next adventure.