Dead Point

Six weeks after a killer was arrested in his bar, Jack is still trying to coax his pickleball club back to normal. The Christmas lights stayed up. The regulars order quieter drinks. Nobody mentions Marcus Wells by name during court time. Jack - forty-seven, ex-climber, professional listener - would be content to pour wine and let the season turn.

Then Detective Rafael Navarro sits down at the end of the bar with a Topo Chico and a problem.

Owen Marsh, owner of Summit Wall Climbing Co. in Golden, fell from a route in Clear Creek Canyon he had climbed a hundred times. The gear failed in a way gear doesn't fail on its own. The wife is composed. The staff is polite. The scene is clean. And Navarro - who has a badge, a warrant pad, and every resource a Jefferson County detective could want - needs something he doesn't have: a second pair of eyes that doesn't belong to a cop.

"You're good at rooms, Jack."

Jack has sworn off other people's problems. He has also, apparently, stopped pretending he can.

Set against the sandstone and black ice of the Colorado Front Range, Dead Point is a slow-burn crime novella about a bartender who reads people for a living, a detective who needs someone the witnesses won't lie to, and a climbing accident that wasn't one. A murder hinges on a piece of metal turned into a lie - and the man who checked his gear didn't check everything.

Second in the Navarro & Jack mysteries