Deadly Assumptions

Will a string of mysterious trespassing incidents give Rookie Officer Ed Solomon his chance at being a big-time detective? Gordon Hepler and Ed Solomon are reminiscing at Finnegan's bar one snowy night, about a case that turned Gordon's career path around and had Solomon rethinking his desires to be a big-city detective. Back then, Gordon had no intentions of being a cop, and Ed was a greener-than-green rookie police officer being trained by Arch Hepler, Gordon's father.

In most places, people breaking into garden and storage sheds might not be a big deal, but in the small town of Mapleton, Colorado, it's a veritable crime wave, at least according to Chief Dixon. Kids playing pranks? Or something more serious? Could these trespassers have something to do with a much bigger, big-city crime?

What starts out as a perfunctory investigation soon escalates. Will Dixon, Arch Hepler, and new rookie Solomon discover the truth before Mapleton sees its first homicide in decades?

Deadly Assumptions, a cross between a cozy mystery and a police procedural, is the seventh offering in Terry Odell's Mapleton Mystery series. It, like all the others, can be read as a stand alone.