Delta Mystery Writer Joan Klengler: My Newspaper Column

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

My Newspaper Column

I am pleased to announce my guest column appearing in The Burbank Leader and The Glendale News Press. Since I am a guest columnist, my Reflections from the Rancho runs as space permits, generally once a month. So far, it has appeared in Saturday's editions and this past weekend, it appeared in The Glendale News Press but not the Leader. If you are interested, and you missed the paper, you can check it out at the newspapers web sites on line.

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Welcome to Delta Mystery Writer's Blog

Welcome to deltamysterywriter.com.

Following is a synopsis of all volumes in the Delta Mysteries series available in both Kindle and soft cover on Amazon.

Book 1 - In The Delta - LAPD officer Jessie Green is on a houseboat vacation, seeking to escape memories of her fiancee a motorcycle officer killed a year earlier, when she learns that her life long friend Angel Edwards and Angel's boyfriend Peter are missing. As she unravels the mystery, Jessie meets a local man, the Lakota Nick Red Cloud. The story of their growing love for each other plays out against a backdrop of flashbacks to Angel and Peter's life in the Delta, until at last Jessie finds the answer to the mystery in a place called Lost Slough.

Book 2 - On Sutter Island - Jessie Red Cloud, former LAPD officer, and now Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy, searches for a serial rapist who savagely beats his victims. And as she searches, the perpetrator becomes fascinated with Jessie and decides that she is the one he has been waiting for. Behind the scenes of the investigation, Jessie is pregnant with her first child and Nick and Jessie's home on Sutter Island the gathering place for her husband's large extended family is in stark contrast with the world outside, the place where danger lives.

Book 3 - The Meadows - In The Meadows, a lush wildlife protection area encompassed by myriad waterways, lies the tiny private island of wealthy Sacramento businessman and politician Colin Talbot. But money and influence cannot keep tragedy from invading his family retreat. Colin awakens to the sound of waves hitting his dock, and discovers his young daughter missing. When she turns up dead in the water, it is quickly established that she was a victim of murder.

When the police, stymied by political influences and the family's lack of cooperation, are unable to find the killer, Colin Talbot hires Jessie Red Cloud, Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy turned Private Investigator.

Book 4 - A Beautiful Place to Die

In the fourth installment of The Delta Mysteries, Jessie encounters a new and deadly enemy.

Olivia Winslow is new to The Delta, her past a mystery, her obsession Nick Red Cloud.

Despite the misgivings of Nick and Susan, Jessie Red Cloud is engaged in a search for her childhood friend Angel, mysteriously missing once again. As Jessie searches for Angel, Olivia Winslow sets in motion a twisted plan to destroy Jessie and have Nick for herself.

Book 5 - A Place Called Locke

The quiet nicker of a horse, the song of nightbirds, a chorus of frogs - the background to sleep on tranquil Sutter Island - are replaced by the ringing of a phone. From Mexico comes a desperate plea disguised as a casual request.

A young doctor has fallen in love with the wrong woman. His love will lead him into a web of deceit and danger as he is forced to become part of a plan to smuggle drugs up the California coast.

In The Delta, Jessie Red Cloud is returning to her work as a Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy, unaware that she and her friend and former partner Bodie McDonald are about to be drawn into a secretive task force, led by a man who trusts no one.

Two groups of people are on a collision course, one that will lead them to a deadly confrontation in the quiet backwater behind a place called Locke.

Book 6 - New Hope Landing

It begins with a dream of a horse - the Gypsy Vanner - and a routine complaint call to a Gypsy encampment in The Meadows where Jessie and Bodie first encounter Alida Coine - a woman who has the gift of seeing the secret that Jessie and Bodie share.

So begins a tale of love, deception and murder with deep roots in other kinds of secrets - family secrets - kept hidden by some, all of the signs ignored by those who see the hint of what lies beneath the surface.

Deputy Jessie Red Cloud and her partner Bodie McDonald find themselves drawn into the mystery that has its beginnings in The Meadows and reaches its conclusion in a place called New Hope Landing.

FAVORITE PLACES

The pen name Delta Mystery Writer was chosen because of a place - the California Delta, a world of waterways, islands and levees - that seems to have been created like some magical stage set as a perfect backdrop for stories of mystery and romance. My affection for the Sacramento River Delta, the towns of Locke and Walnut Grove, The Ryde Hotel, Korth's Pirate's Lair and Happy Harbor, Al's Place and Wimpy's led me to use those places extensively in the books In The Delta, On Sutter Island & The Meadows.