Jon Talton (–2026)

You know the movie that plays in your head while you read? This is a book you’ll be watching in black & white. Dark city streets, Packards driven by men in fedoras & plenty of cigarette smoke….all of this transports you to 1930’s Phoenix. It’s like many American towns…..reeling from the Great Depression & not even able to (legally) drown its sorrows due to Prohibition.

It’s in this setting we meet brothers Gene & Don Hammons. Both are veterans of the Great War who returned & show more joined the Phoenix Police Department. But any similarities end there. To get a sense of their relationship dynamic, think Cain & Abel or maybe Noel & Liam.

Gene rose quickly through the ranks & was a well respected detective before being forced out after he stood up for a woman framed for murder. His innate sense of right vs wrong meant he couldn’t go along to get along in a department riddled with corruption. So now he ekes out a living as a P.I. His days are spent looking for missing persons & catching up with girlfriend Victoria Vasquez, a news photographer.

Don resented Gene’s success & skills as a detective. Fortunately, he’s never been burdened by ethics & welcomes the little perks that come with being on the job. He never misses an opportunity to sneer at Gene’s moral code. So it’s more than a bit surprising when he reaches out to help his little brother.

It all begins with a body. A pretty young blond is found by the train tracks & there are a couple of things immediately wrong with this picture. First, she’s in pieces…literally. Second, the only thing in her handbag is Gene’s business card. Fortunately, Don was at the scene & the card quickly makes its way back to Gene who’s stumped. Was the woman planning to hire him? Or was he being set up to take the fall?

Identifying the woman proves a challenge. Local politicians worried about bad PR are keen for the cops to move on & with no new leads, the case is quietly shelved. But Gene can’t let it go. He begins to dig into the mysterious young woman’s past, a decision that puts him & Victoria in danger.

Settle in for a dark & twisty tale that is richly evocative of the era. It’s a time of rampant poverty, Depression camps, dirty politicians & corrupt cops. The mob is spreading west like a fungus & no one is immune. There’s a definite noir vibe to the narrative but the style of prose & Gene’s character prevent it from sliding into pulp territory.

Yes, he’s a PI in the 1930’s but that’s where any similarity to his hardboiled counterparts ends (although he may argue that Victoria qualifies as a femme fatale…). Instead of a swaggering, tough talking collector of dames (that would be Don), Gene is a quiet man haunted by what he experienced during the war. Today he’s be diagnosed with PTSD but the best they had then was shell-shock, a mildly derogatory term implying weakness. As a consequence, he is startled by loud noises & frequently takes little mental side trips down memory lane. As he recalls these vignettes from his past, we get a better understanding of his relationship with Don & how they grew so far apart. He’s a deep thinker with a spirituality he clings to as his last hope for redemption.

In terms of pace & direction, it reminded me of The Searcher by Tana French. It’s a literary PI story that is more about the people than the crime. It moves along at a steady speed that allows you to enjoy the descriptive prose & get to know the characters. Tension builds slowly until you reach a place where you’re afraid to turn the page, sure there’s going to be an “oh crap” moment right around the corner. That continues to the last few pages when all pieces finally slide into place.

It’s a dark, immersive read with a sympathetic MC you’ll quietly root for. BTW, thumbs up to those responsible for the beautiful cover art. show less

This mystery set in Phoenix in the 1930s stars Gene Hammons who was a homicide detective until he lost his job when his efforts to free a wrongly convicted woman came into conflict with a well-connected, powerful man. Now he's a private investigator trying to make a living in the midst of the Great Depression.

Gene served in World War I, even lied about his age so that he could enlist with his older brother, and came home with bad memories and trouble with loud, unexpected noises. He managed show more to build a very successful career in the Phoenix police department. He's most famous for finding the University Park Strangler who left a trail of young female bodies in a nice part of town.

When his brother calls him to a crime scene, Gene gets involved in trying to find out who murdered a beautiful young blonde, dismembered her, and left his business card in her purse. He's pretty much alone in his investigation since the powers that be don't want any more bad publicity for Phoenix which would damage their role as a tourist destination.

Gene and his girlfriend news photographer Victoria Vasquez soon find lots of hidden secrets surrounding the murder victim Carrie Dell. The story is filled with corrupt cops, mob exports from Chicago, and local criminals from a variety of ethnic groups. The language is contemporary to the times and jars a little on our more sensitive current nerve ends, but the story is compelling and fast-paced.

Fans of historical mysteries will enjoy this story which is larded with real life characters including Barry Goldwater. It paints a vivid picture of life and crime in 1930s Phoenix, Arizona. show less

City of Dark Corners is an absolute gold mine of Phoenix history, but that's not the only reason to read it. (Although I will say that anyone who thinks that it's too hot for anything to happen here needs to think again.) Readers will also get a good feeling for life during the Depression. For one thing, it never occurred to me that there would be a lot of missing persons during this time, and I felt about as smart as a box of rocks when Talton explained this to me.

The mystery is a good show more one, too, which is something that I always expect from Jon Talton, and it has a noir feel that some readers are going to love. If you're not a noir fan, don't roll your eyes and move along. I said a noir "feel"-- a bit like using margarine instead of butter.

As with any mystery worth its salt, there have to be characters that keep my interest, and City of Dark Corners has them. Besides the City of Phoenix, which is a character in and of itself, there is Gene Hammons, the World War I veteran, a former police detective who was Amelia Earhart's bodyguard when she was in town, and now private eye who sings in a church choir to help keep him sane. His love interest, Victoria Vasquez, is a strong, interesting character, too. She's a photographer who often takes crime scene photos for the police department, but she's working toward a career in photojournalism like Margaret Bourke-White's.

If you're in the mood for a historical mystery that's a bit gritty, a puzzler to solve, and has two strong characters, City of Dark Corners may be just the thing for you. I'm hoping that it's the start of a brand-new series. If you don't go in for historicals, try Talton's David Mapstone mysteries. They are first-rate.

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley) show less

I always learn something fascinating about Phoenix's history when I read one of Jon Talton's David Mapstone mysteries. This time Talton works his magic on the very real 1978 car bombing death of reporter Don Bolles-- something that happened shortly after I moved to Phoenix. The author can still give me thrills when I read about an historian's excitement upon uncovering primary sources, and there are so many layers to this investigation and so many well-known names that I was compelled to show more keep reading faster and faster.

Talton does not let up on the tension or the action in The Bomb Shelter, and there's even some mood-lightening humor from time to time. It's fun to speculate about how close he came to solving the Bolles murder. His main characters-- Mapstone, wife Lindsey, Mike Peralta, and new addition Malik Jones-- are well-drawn and feel almost as though they're members of my family. Especially Mapstone. With his constant whining about the heat here in Phoenix, I want to look at him like he's my cousin Steve and say, "You're a native Phoenician. It gets hot here. Suck it up (and shut up)!"

This is a series I've loved since the first book, Concrete Desert. Talton is a gifted storyteller, and I love reading about the characters he's created and learning a bit about the fascinating history of my adopted hometown. It will be interesting to see where he takes his readers next. show less