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David Mapstone is a history professor, now working as a detective for Sheriff Mike Peralta, solving cold cases. Peralta wants him to write a book featuring the cases he’s solved. But Mapstone gets easily sidetracked by a woman claiming to be a former student of his, who wants him to check out a murder her now-dead father claims to have committed. Mapstone finds a body, but it isn’t the very long-dead one he expects, but somebody much more recently dead. Mapstone’s wife has to go to Washington on a job for the Feds. Lindsey unexpectedly meets Robin, the sister David never knew existed. Robin stays in Phoenix while Lindsey heads to DC. Robin has had a troubled past, and is a pot-stirrer from the get-go. Can you see trouble coming? Mapstone figures out who the spurious student is. She’s the wife of a politician, the politician with a major beef going with Peralta. Peralta wants Mapstone to back off; Mapstone wants to persist. Everything he touches seems to lead back to the politician, Maricopa County Supervisor Tom Earley, and a project to which Earley is connected, Arizona Dreams. For the most part, ARIZONA DREAMS is a fairly good mystery. I liked David Mapstone, with one caveat. I like his wife. I don’t like Robin, or Earley, or pretty much most of the people Talton wants the reader to not like. The setting is handled well; I always find it a pleasure to read about warm, dry places when it’s cold and pouring down rain where I am, and Talton makes me feel the heat. The plot works, with (again) one caveat. At the beginning of Chapter 19, Mapstone does something that pulled me right out of the book and made me say to myself, "What the hell? Have her mail you the damn stuff!" While I understand the need, plotwise, for Mapstone to do what he did, I didn’t understand, in terms of how the character is portrayed, why he would do something so blatantly stupid. Talton, in my opinion, should have come up with a viable reason for Mapstone to do what he did. Having said that, ARIZONA DREAM before and after that few paragraphs was a very good mystery. Do with it what you will.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, October 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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