Showing results by author "Frank Zafiro" in All Categories

Tyler Garrett is a model SWAT officer whose good looks, education, and familial status add to that image. The fact that he is a Black man in the predominately white Spokane Police Department only adds to the city administration's pride in one of their own. One summer evening, Garrett stops a reckless driver. As Garrett dives for cover, the driver turns and begins shooting as well. Garrett survives the ambush by killing the driver and chasing off the additional shooter. The legend of Tyler Garrett grows. Until the initial investigation.

Every city has organized crime. But only River City has a Russian gangster like Valeriy. He’s meticulous, cunning, and willing to sacrifice anything - and anyone - to see his conquest through. In Val’s way are the men and women of the River City Police Department, including rookie B. J. Carson. She’s trying to fill the shoes of a legend while the pressures of patrol and her own past catch up to her. She and her colleagues must unite and work together with a former River City cop turned FBI agent to face down the single biggest organized crime threat River City has ever seen.

Spokane Police Officer Tyler Garrett is a man of many different images. To the public, he is a once-maligned and now redeemed cop, the victim of public prejudice and city politics. To the Chief of Police and the Mayor, he is a good cop, falsely accused and thankfully back to work. To his wife, a man she no longer knows. And to those who know his secret, he is the most terrible thing any police officer can be — a traitor to his badge.

The last two years have been tumultuous ones for the Spokane Police Department. On the surface, the agency has suffered from scandal and police officer deaths. Underneath, a secret and deadly game of cat and mouse has played out. Now the Department of Justice has sent investigators to determine if federal intervention is needed. Their presence disrupts everyone’s agenda and threatens to expose dark secrets. Goals shift from winning situations to simply surviving. Not everyone will.

Longtime grifters and lovers, the couple is in St. Louis to run a con on Barry Jacobsen, who owns a concrete business. But the clock is ticking on the deal, and on them. Mobsters from Philadelphia are one step behind, seeking revenge for the pair’s most recent scam.

A violent robber is loose in River City. Meet the cops that must take him down. Stefan Kopriva, a young hotshot. Katie MacLeod, a woman in what is still mostly a man’s world. Karl Winter, about to retire but with one more good bust left in him. And Thomas Chisolm, a former Green Beret who knows how dangerous a man like the Scarface Robber can be. These are the patrol officers of River City - that mythical thin blue line between society and anarchy.

In this third installment of the Officer Tyler Garrett saga, the stakes have risen even higher. Garrett seeks to solidify his position. Officer Gary Stone undergoes a surprising metamorphosis. Captain Farrell tries to bring the situation to a head. Rookie Jun Yang struggles to find her place, while Officer Ray Zielinski must repay a debt that threatens to land him in greater danger. Meanwhile, Detective Wardell Clint continues to gnaw at the bone of the case that has consumed him for almost two years. Something has got to give.

It is December 1999, and the spectre of Y2K hangs over the police department. More menacing yet, officers respond to a hate-fueled home invasion robbery. As the entirety of the River City Police Department prepares for possible chaos when the calendar turns over to the year 2000, they also must stop a gang of white supremacists who plan to use that same chaos to mask their biggest crime yet.

River City is plagued by a serial rapist. His attacks are becoming more brutal and Detective John Tower is sure that he’ll go from rape to murder if he isn’t stopped soon. Meanwhile, the rapes stir up ghosts for both Officer Katie MacLeod and Officer Thomas Chisolm. Both struggle to put those haunted memories to rest even as they are drawn into the center of Tower’s investigation. When a series of missteps and near misses push the rapist even further, everyone involved must face their old fears...or be destroyed by them.

The men and women of the River City Police Department are sworn to protect and to serve. But when a six-year-old girl is kidnapped off a residential street in broad daylight, each cop must rise to heroic levels. Detectives scramble to solve the kidnapping while patrol officers comb the streets looking for the missing girl. Racing against time, every cop on the job focuses on finding her. Before it is too late. Before they fail her.

It is the nightmare of every community – a school shooting. In 2001, When a disturbed teenager masterminds this terrible event, everyone in River City is plunged into the darkness that surrounds it. The students and teachers try to survive, and the men and women of RCPD try to save them. But when things go horribly wrong, everyone seems to be looking elsewhere for someone to blame. Officer Katie MacLeod is among many who discover that the nightmare doesn't end when the shooting stops.

Those words send Stefan Kopriva, the former cop-turned-investigator, down a frustrating and baffling path after Laura Shelton. Is she running from an embezzlement charge? Or hiding from an abusive husband? People are talking but nothing they say is getting Kopriva closer to the truth. Who is the real Laura? Kind and caring? Desperate and guilt-ridden? Or was she ruthless and opportunistic? Kopriva won’t know until he finds her.

Officer Lee Salter is a third-generation cop who bleeds blue. Amid the departmental chaos, he does the only thing he can—be a good officer. That means showing up for every shift, responding to calls for service, and always doing the right thing. All the while, the Department of Justice and its local supporters hope to catch another officer in its net of reform. Salter refuses to be that officer.

A frustrated crime scene cleaner...an off duty cop in a jam...a patrol officer who believes in a strange fate...a holier-than-thou Internal Affairs whose world gets turned upside down...plus those that are crazy, surrounded in sadness or just trying to get by - these are the many and varied characters of River City, brought to life in 17 short stories by the author of the River City crime novels.

George “Mase” Masaryk knows about secrets. He has a few of his own, including the reason he left the police department. The son of Czechoslovak hippies, his life has been a strange journey from rebel to cop to private investigator. It is a path his parents would never have chosen for him. One full of secrets and regrets.

Meticulous private investigator Stanley Melvin likes to keep his work grounded in reality, not at all like the classic detective novels he has read incessantly since childhood. But his best friend and annoying neighbor Rudy quickly points out that his routine "cheater" case is rapidly taking on all of the features that Stanley steadfastly insists are mere fictional tropes of the genre. Stanley isn't too sure how he feels about this. But as a professional, he forges ahead, despite getting out of his comfort zone.

Times are tough for the River City Police Department. The city budget is collapsing, forcing an already understaffed department to contemplate laying off cops. The community is upset over the handling of recent events, and their anger is impacting the agency from the ground up. Negotiations with the police union are somehow both heated and stagnant at the same time.

Dead Even features 15 stories highlighting major and minor characters from the River City series, including series favorite Katie MacLeod, Detectives Finch and Elias, hard-luck Officer Paul Hiero, and transplanted gangster Dominic Bracco.

When disgraced former cop Stefan Kopriva is asked by an old high school classmate to find a runaway 16-year-old girl, he reluctantly accepts. Driven by guilt over a terrible mistake that drove him from the force more than 10 years earlier, Kopriva battles old injuries, old demons, and long ago memories as he unravels the mystery of the missing Kris Sinderling and seeks his own redemption.

Boone has been prospecting with the Iron Brotherhood outlaw motorcycle gang for almost a year, trying to earn his patch with the club. When a simple muscle job goes terribly wrong, his world changes forever. He is quickly plunged deeper into a world of drug and intimidation, and the lines between right and wrong blur. The bonds of brotherhood that he forges with other members clash with the dark actions they take. His girlfriend, Faith, represents a danger of another kind, but Boone can’t stop himself where she is concerned, either.