Death on the High Lonesome — Frank Hayes

The author of Death at the Black Bull returns to the Southwestern town of Haywood where the onset of winter ushers in a new mystery for Sheriff Virgil Dalton…

Virgil knows that his sleepy hometown is starting to reflect the times, in good ways and bad. It still comes as a shock when his deputy is almost killed by the body of a woman falling from the highway overpass onto his car. A woman who had been fleeing for her life…

Then longtime resident Velma Thompson is found dead on her porch -- her husband missing. To search for the man, Virgil saddles up and heads to the High Lonesome, the rugged mountains above their ranch. And on a wind-swept mesa, he'll find the first clues that point to a killer whose body count has only just begun…