Burns and Hadfield are back
When the horse of rancher Lyon Hamilton arrives at a neighboring ranch riderless, everyone fears the worst. Hamilton practically lives in the saddle, often surveying his family's huge tracts of land in the San Rafael Valley near Patagonia, Arizona astride his stallion. To unseat such a seasoned rider, something needed to go terribly wrong.
When local law enforcement fail to find Hamilton or a believable reason for his disappearance, Hamilton's sister hires Jolene Hadfield, a retired police chief, to look into the mystery. Jolene and romantic partner, Andy Burns are soon on their way to the remote Hamilton family ranch, a spread that sits close to the Arizona-Mexico border.
Unknown to Hadfield and Burns, FBI Agent Ron Kroll has also arrived in Arizona. Kroll is going deep undercover to infiltrate a criminal group suspected of smuggling narcotics and human trafficking from Mexico along the same remote section of borderland as the Hamilton's ranch. The smuggling group is headed by a disgraced ex-agent, so Kroll and the Bureau's interest in this case is more than professional--it's about settling the score with one of their own that has gone bad.
Racial tensions, drugs, big money and dangerous rivalries converge in a covert war brewing in a remote section of American high desert, and it's about to boil over into something profoundly deadly. Hadfield and Burns quickly realize the rancher may have been the first of many causalities to come.
Both gritty and realistic, this new novel from author/retired police officer Tom Ellis, is the action-packed followup to Biloxi Lights, featuring retired cops Andy Burns and Jolene Hadfield.