Showing results by author "Frank Zafiro" in All Categories

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.

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.

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.

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.

After two tours in Vietnam and 25 years as a police officer, Thomas Chisolm is looking forward to a quiet retirement. That hope is quickly shattered when Mai, a ghost from his past, finds him and demands justice for the horrors she suffered during the Vietnam War…horrors Chisolm couldn’t save her from. Now Chisolm must find the man responsible and bring him to justice to repay an old debt and in the hopes of putting his own demons to rest…once and for all.

Sugar Got Low contains a tale of grifters, a prequel story to the well-regarded Ania series, several trips back to River City, and one to La Sombra, Texas. Enjoy a Walter Mitty homage set in San Francisco, a deadly day in Roman Britain, the heartbreaking story of a junkie, and the suspenseful one of a murderer in a black car. And at the end of it all, you’ll experience the dark but inspiring title story of perseverance that was only made possible because of a misunderstood lyric.

Detectives Finch and Elias have seen a lot - murders, assaults, rapes, missing persons - but they've never investigated a missing mummy before. Follow the two partners as they sift through a half dozen different suspects and try to solve the mystery of a stolen child mummy from the River City museum. Part whodunit mystery, part procedural, with more than a little wise-cracking along the way, The Bastard Mummy has a little something for all kinds of mystery listeners, set in Frank Zafiro's River City universe.

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.

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.

Good Shepherd is a three-story collection of erotic crime fiction swirling with lust, revenge, and insatiable sexual gluttony. Three very different men and women sit at the center of each story. Yet, in the end, they’re all the same — forever changed by forbidden temptation in a world where justice pretends to be blind.

A Podcast featuring crime fiction authors (mostly) in which we discuss crime fiction (theirs, ours, everyone's), and life.

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.

2010. River City, Washington. Detective Katie MacLeod is already working a pair of burglaries involving a suspect who cuts window screens to enter homes and steals money and drugs from elderly victims. Then she gets handed a cold missing persons case that comes with political pressure. Katie must balance finding a dangerous burglar with discovering the fate of a woman who disappeared five years ago.

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.

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 ten 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.

Faced with a possible murderer that won't answer questions, a police department asking the wrong people the wrong questions, and threats of violence from an unknown source, Kopriva forges on, determined to discover the truth...even if it kills him.

Billie Jo Higgins may be small, but she is a skilled burglar, using her craft to keep her and Toby, her addict twin brother, afloat in a hard world. It is a difficult life, but the two are surviving. They take care of each other.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to The Last Cop & Other Stories and experience the compelling world of Frank Zafiro's crime fiction.

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.

Sandy Banks has temporarily escaped the life of a vigilante assassin in Spokane and is trying to find his way back home. It won't be easy--the agent he evaded is determined to bring him to justice. She is tenacious and resourceful, dredging up the elusive truth of Sandy's past as she pursues him.