Murder, arson, robbery, rape, and kidnapping are alive and well in Tucson, Arizona during the blistering hot summer of 1894. Are they the result of several unrelated acts or the work of one criminal mastermind? Pima Gallagher, a detective for the Southern Pacific Railroad, must try to keep his landlady's eleven-year-old daughter, Scout, out of trouble while he follows clue after clue, until he ferrets out the real architect of evil from a mass of false trails and confusion.

Art Parker, an unemployed journalist, answers an ad for employment, but the ad has few details about what the job entails or where he'll be working. He gets the job after an evening interview at a huge, Victorian-style mansion miles from anywhere. The owner, an incredibly wealthy old man, hires Art as live-in writing coach for his teenage granddaughter. That sounds like an easy, relaxing sort of job, at least until the next afternoon when Art and Mary Ann--she's the granddaughter--find the housemaid dead on the girl's bedroom floor. An out-of-control sheriff, a bizarrely named lawyer, a...

A body falls off a train during a heavy downpour near Tucson, Arizona in late January of 1895. As the rain ends, the wagons of a traveling medicine show arrive in town with performers to entertain and a doctor of questionable credentials to peddle his wares. Pima Gallagher, a detective for the Southern Pacific Railroad, assisted, or at least she thinks so, by Scout Walker, his eleven-year-old stepdaughter, try to learn the identity of the corpse and whether its sudden appearance has anything to do with the nearly simultaneous arrival of Dr. Blenheim's show. Meanwhile, Pima's brother and...

The butler did it, or maybe he didn't. It's summer, and fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Markham is bored. Then she remembers that her wealthy grandfather just happens to own a rather rundown lake a short distance down the hill from his huge Victorian mansion. She enlists her live-in writing coach, Art Parker, and her friend, Jennifer Martin, to help restore the lake and its surroundings to a thing of beauty, using Grandfather's money, of course. Things get off to a good start--that is until they discover the decomposing body of a teenage girl in the woods. Then there's the butler who likes to...

What could be more fun than a deer hunting trip to the mountains near Prescott, Arizona in November, 1895? At least it seems that way to Southern Pacific Railroad Detective Pima Gallagher, his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Scout Walker, and several other family members and friends until one of the group ends up with a knife in the back. Complicating matters are a howling blizzard and the sudden appearance of three murdering outlaws. With Pima slogging through the snow chasing outlaws and Scout hot on Pima's trail things go from bad to worse until Pima and Scout's survival hangs by a thread. Back...

What could be more fun than a day at the beach? A month at the beach, perhaps? That's what teenager Mary Ann Markham, her live-in writing coach Art Parker, and her best friend Jennifer Martin think when Mary Ann convinces her wealthy grandfather to rent a fancy beach house for the entire month of July near the small East Coast town of Shipwreck. But then strange things begin to happen, especially with the appearance of several not very well preserved bodies, an unexpected shooting or two, and a murder with mob overtones. Meanwhile, Art becomes close friends with a local emergency room doctor...

Why is 13-year-old Scout Walker first hiding out in a mountaintop cave and then working in the copper mining town of Bisbee, Arizona disguised as a 16-year-old messenger boy during the autumn of 1896? Her stepfather, Southern Pacific Railroad Detective Pima Gallagher, is up to his ears in problems dealing with inexplicable rail shipments at the same time he's busy searching for the runaway girl. Will Scout be able to maintain her disguise while remaining hidden from her family, or will she become just another victim of a mining accident before Pima is able to locate and rescue her?

Fifteen-year-old Mary Ann Markham, and her best friend, Jennifer Martin, decide to host an innocent Halloween party for some schoolmates at the Victorian mansion of Mary Ann's wealthy grandfather. Her live-in writing coach, Art Parker, and his fiancee, Marsha Brown, M.D., have joined the other party attendees in a rather complicated treasure hunt when the game is interrupted by the discovery of a very dead body in a cave. After Mary Ann and Jennifer are nearly killed in a school bus accident another body is found in the cave, and then two more, but what makes things even more bizarre is the...

Ellen Gallagher and Maria Gonzales, taken hostage at their Tucson dress shop by a hired killer, are hauled unceremoniously into Arizona's most inhospitable desert. When Ellen's husband, Southern Pacific Railroad Detective Pima Gallagher; her daughter, 14-year-old Scout Walker; and Maria's husband, Jose, set out on the women's trail they are nearly killed by a raging grass fire and a flash flood. Back in Tucson a wealthy couple from Mexico is targeted by a group of swindlers. When the Mexican man is murdered outside his home, confusion reigns as Pima and Scout compare the alibis of several...

Southern Pacific Railroad Detective Pima Gallagher is asked by the Santa Fe Railroad to help track down who might be smuggling whiskey to the huge Navajo Reservation. When he suddenly disappears, Pima's stepdaughter, fifteen-year-old Scout Walker, convinces her mother, Ellen, to travel with her to Winslow, Arizona to find Pima and help him in his search. At the same time, Scout decides to begin writing her memoirs with assistance from an English author they meet in Winslow, a waitress at the local Harvey House Restaurant is found murdered, Pima spends some time in the painted desert as the...