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DIVWhen a woman burns to death, Gabe Wager uncovers a nest of short-fuse fanatics /div DIVThe fire department finds her in the closet, knees clutched to her chest, body charred beyond recognition. At first they can’t even tell that the corpse was a woman. Although the death appears accidental, they call in homicide detective Gabe Wager to make sure. Forensics identifies her as Pauline Tillotson, an FBI informant working from inside an environmentalist group with terrorist leanings. Her cover had been blown, and the extremists killed her to protect a sinister plan to annihilate Denver./divDIV /divDIVAs Wager races to save his town, two policemen are killed and a teenager falls victim to an escalating drug war. Denver is coming apart at the seams, but if Gabe Wager can’t stop the eco-terrorist plot, there won’t be anyone left in the Mile High City to care./div
DIVWhen a stripper is murdered, Gabe Wager turns the red-light district inside out/div DIVMore than any other establishment on Denver’s red-light strip, the Cinnamon Club has taken advantage of the new law allowing all-nude dancing. What was once confined to back rooms now takes center stage, and the activities in the club’s private section grow ever more depraved. Annette Sheldon is the Cinnamon Club’s rising star until her body is found dumped in an alley, eyes pecked out by scavenging magpies. Homicide detective Gabe Wager and his partner pull Annette’s husband in for questioning, and though they don’t think he killed her, they do think he’s lying about something./divDIV /divDIVWhen a second dancer is murdered, Wager goes undercover on the strip, searching for the man with the violent fetish. The more questions he asks, though, the more he risks becoming the killer’s next target./div
DIVDIVTargeted by thugs, a wrestling impresario reaches out to an old friend/divDIV When Otto Lidke got a tryout in pro football, he hired a lawyer friend named Jim Raiford to handle his contract. The negotiations were bungled, forcing both men into a career change. Trying to start a pro wrestling circuit in Denver, Lidke runs afoul of the national federation, which does everything it can—legal and otherwise—to stamp out his new venture. When shady business practices escalate into threats on his life, Lidke calls on Raiford, now a private investigator, to dig up some dirt on the men who are trying to put him out of business./divDIV But instead he gets Raiford’s daughter, Julie—a whip-smart sleuth looking to prove she’s every bit as savvy as her father. As Julie and her dad dig into the vicious world of small-time wrestling, they find that though the fights may be fixed, the danger is all too real. /divDIV/div/div
When gang warfare claims his cousin, Detective Wager seeks justice There was a time in Denver when a child’s murder was a tragedy, but now that gangs have taken hold of the city, teenage deaths are sickeningly routine. As far as homicide detective Gabriel Wager can tell, the latest victim, a thirteen-year-old boy, was a good kid, with no affiliation to any local gang. But in gangland, even innocents have a way of becoming targets. As he investigates the boy’s murder, Wager’s aunt asks him to speak to her son Julio, a teenager who’s been cutting class and quit his after-school construction job. They fail to connect, and a few days later Julio is found executed in the same style as the previous boy, shot in the back of the head. As he tries to unravel the dual mystery, Wager finds himself deep in a callous world, where even children can be killers.
DIVA tip about a murdered mob boss forces Gabe Wager to reopen a cold case/div DIVA year ago, Marco Scorvelli was murdered while picking up his morning paper. A sawed-off shotgun put a hole in his stomach, and streaked the inside of his sports coat with the mob boss’s innards. As Scorvelli crawled towards his front door, the killer left the shotgun angled neatly on the sidewalk. No prints were recovered, and no headway was ever made on the case./divDIV /divDIVNow a reliable underworld source passes a message to homicide detective Gabe Wager. The killing wasn’t ordered by a rival family, but by Scorvelli’s brother, in an attempt to take control of the organization. After a year of peace, a war is about to erupt between Denver’s Italian and Hispanic crime syndicates, and Gabe Wager will be in the middle, trying to keep the city from burning to the ground./div
DIVKirk watches nervously as a new employee goes undercover with a drug ring/div DIVThe employees at the Advantage Company have started to steal. They are angrier than they used to be, and also clumsier—accident reports have spiked. To Devlin Kirk, these are telltale signs of on-the-job drug abuse. Hired by Advantage to smash the drug ring that’s sprung up inside its factory, Kirk sends his newest employee, earnest farm boy Chris Newman, to infiltrate the company. Newman sees suspicious activity everywhere, but lacks the experience to find hard evidence. Only when Newman is tortured to death is Kirk sure that the kid was on to something./divDIV /divDIVMeanwhile, Kirk’s partner, Bunch, takes a job working as a bodyguard for a man who claims to be hunted by Japanese assassins. Kirk & Associates has a reputation of doing anything for its clients. In these two cases, the job wants blood./div
DIVAn old cowboy asks Gabe for help with his estranged sons/div DIVWhen he was a teenager, Gabe Wager and his friends in the Denver barrio had no greater idol than Vaquero Tommy Sanchez. One of the rare Mexicans to break through into professional rodeo, Sanchez was a hero to every Hispanic boy with dreams of making it in a white man’s world. By the time Sanchez’s star faded, Wager was away with the Marine Corps, enduring terrors but supported by his memories of hot, dusty rodeo days./divDIV /divDIVNow the old barrio has been bulldozed, Wager is a homicide detective, and Sanchez is little more than a memory of faded glory. The retired cowboy’s estranged sons are following in his footsteps, and he fears they may have fallen in with a bad crowd. He asks Wager to find them and keep them out of trouble. Wager agrees, even though rogue police work could cost him his badge. What man could ever refuse his boyhood hero?/div
Matt Severnson has assembled a team of quasi-geek individuals to build a revolutionary city-based website. The system becomes a hit, although fast food addiction, incessant sexual tension and heated bingo competition distract the group. While the opportunity arises to build the first government-sponsored high-speed Internet portal, the issue comes second to Matt's relationship with co-leader Katy. Their fiery romance continues despite bickering over everything...except fish dinners.
The Mystery Fancier, Volume 8 Number 4, July-August 1986, contains: "That Pawn-Shop Gypsy," by Bob Sampson, "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer: The Great Cover-Up," by Jeff Banks, "The Rural Policeman in American Mystery Fiction," by George Dove and "The Cream of Queen," by Frank Floyd.
Includes entries for maps and atlases.