Rex Burns

When a stripper is murdered, Gabe Wager turns the red-light district inside out More than any other establishment on Denver's red-light strip, the Cinnamon Club has taken advantage of the new law allowing all-nude dancing. What was once confined to back rooms now takes center stage, and the activities in the club's private section grow ever more depraved. Annette Sheldon is the Cinnamon Club's rising star until her body is found dumped in an alley,...

A forcibly retired marine investigates the disappearance of a young girl Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Steele is too honest for Washington. If any other Marine Corps investigator had noticed a congressman's corruption, he might have kept his mouth shut. But Steele knows his ultimate duty and blows the whistle on a treasonous lawmaker, earning himself a pat on the back and a swift kick out the door. Steele returns to his hometown of San Diego, hoping for...

Devlin investigates a missing Salvadoran's gruesome fate Devlin Kirk and his partner Bunchcroft are Denver's finest industrial security experts, even if Denver doesn't see it that way. Their last big case got them out of debt, but since then the well has been dry. Their firm is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy when Nestor Calamaro, a young illegal immigrant whose family is close to Bunch, disappears. Kirk can't afford any pro bono work, but Bunch...

Wager hunts for the killer of a black councilman, as the city threatens to riot Gabe's girlfriend Jo is drowning. She stares up at him, eyes wide with terror, as he fights to grab her hand. In a moment, the frothing river swallows her up, and Jo is gone.   Nine months have passed since Jo's death, and Detective Wager cannot get the image out of his mind. Rather than fight the urge to blame himself, he embraces the guilt, punishing himself for it...

Kirk watches nervously as a new employee goes undercover with a drug ring The employees at the Advantage Company have started to steal. They are angrier than they used to be, and also clumsier-accident reports have spiked. To Devlin Kirk, these are telltale signs of on-the-job drug abuse. Hired by Advantage to smash the drug ring that's sprung up inside its factory, Kirk sends his newest employee, earnest farm boy Chris Newman, to infiltrate the company....

To get his agency off the ground, security expert Devlin Kirk takes a dangerous case Sabotage threatens the profits of industrial giant McAllister Enterprises. Twice already, accounting errors have forced the company to drop out of $100 million deals, and both times a competing firm, the Aegis Group, swooped in to take over. The CEO suspects industrial espionage, and the obvious suspect is division director Austin Haas, who declined a job offer from...

Now working homicide, Wager lands a gruesome case in the botanic garden Homicide cops are always suspicious of the drug enforcement division, so when ex-narcotics detective Gabe Wager arrives on the murder squad, his first assignment is the graveyard shift. His new commanding officer hopes that the late shift will keep Wager out of trouble, and give him a chance to learn the byzantine regulations that govern murder investigations. But two days later,...

Targeted by thugs, a wrestling impresario reaches out to an old friend When Otto Lidke got a tryout in pro football, he hired a lawyer friend named Jim Raiford to handle his contract. The negotiations were bungled, forcing both men into a career change. Trying to start a pro wrestling circuit in Denver, Lidke runs afoul of the national federation, which does everything it can-legal and otherwise-to stamp out his new venture. When shady business practices...