Harrison Mandell had come to the Arizona outpost of Yuma, on the bug infested banks of the Colorado, to find out who was stealing money from an upriver mining company called Mina del Agua Mala. But from the moment a saloon girl came running naked into the dusty street, and a love-crazed Indian was driven off with a shotgun, Mandell knew this wasn't going to be an ordinary case. Between him and the mine was a hard, muddy stretch of the swirling Colorado...

Alice Rogers, an elderly widow, is dead, found murdered in the Arizona desert. It's easy enough to pin the killing on the teens caught driving her car across the Mexican border, but Sheriff Brady isn't about to let it go at that. Alice was something of a free spirit, with a penchant for Scotch, the glitter of Las Vegas, and a romance with a man twenty years her junior. Her hot-tempered daughter Susan suspects Mom's boyfriend—her former handyman

...

"A cop lies dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun--a local lawman who may well have become the next sheriff of Cochise County. The police brass claim that Andy Brady was dirty, and that his shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna Brady, his devoted wife and mother of their nine-year-old daughter, knows a cover-up when she hears one--and murder when she sees it"--Back cover.