The River City Crime Series

A violent robber is loose in River City. Meet the cops that must take him down. Stefan Kopriva, a young hotshot. Katie MacLeod, a woman in what is still mostly a man’s world. Karl Winter, about to retire but with one more good bust left in him. And Thomas Chisolm, a former Green Beret who knows how dangerous a man like the Scarface Robber can be. These are the patrol officers of River City - that mythical thin blue line between society and anarchy.

The men and women of the River City Police Department are sworn to protect and to serve. But when a six-year-old girl is kidnapped off a residential street in broad daylight, each cop must rise to heroic levels. Detectives scramble to solve the kidnapping while patrol officers comb the streets looking for the missing girl. Racing against time, every cop on the job focuses on finding her. Before it is too late. Before they fail her.

River City is plagued by a serial rapist. His attacks are becoming more brutal and Detective John Tower is sure that he’ll go from rape to murder if he isn’t stopped soon. Meanwhile, the rapes stir up ghosts for both Officer Katie MacLeod and Officer Thomas Chisolm. Both struggle to put those haunted memories to rest even as they are drawn into the center of Tower’s investigation. When a series of missteps and near misses push the rapist even further, everyone involved must face their old fears...or be destroyed by them.

Every city has organized crime. But only River City has a Russian gangster like Valeriy. He’s meticulous, cunning, and willing to sacrifice anything - and anyone - to see his conquest through. In Val’s way are the men and women of the River City Police Department, including rookie B. J. Carson. She’s trying to fill the shoes of a legend while the pressures of patrol and her own past catch up to her. She and her colleagues must unite and work together with a former River City cop turned FBI agent to face down the single biggest organized crime threat River City has ever seen.

It is December 1999, and the spectre of Y2K hangs over the police department. More menacing yet, officers respond to a hate-fueled home invasion robbery. As the entirety of the River City Police Department prepares for possible chaos when the calendar turns over to the year 2000, they also must stop a gang of white supremacists who plan to use that same chaos to mask their biggest crime yet.

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.

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. 

Dead Even features 15 stories highlighting major and minor characters from the River City series, including series favorite Katie MacLeod, Detectives Finch and Elias, hard-luck Officer Paul Hiero, and transplanted gangster Dominic Bracco.

A young woman has been murdered in River City. Police Detective John Tower is assigned to the case, but there are few clues to go on. As he digs into the case, he's soon picking up hints that this murder may not be the killer's first...or his last.

Explore the tangled lives of these men and women in 14 short tales set in River City!

Detective Katie MacLeod has her hands full. It has been four years since her promotion to detective, and after paying her dues in property crimes investigations, she has made it to the Major Crimes unit. This is where the highest profile cases land—homicides, robberies, serious assaults, and sexual assaults. Katie catches two rape cases almost back-to-back. One victim is a prostitute with an unknown suspect… who Katie fears may be gearing up for more assaults. The other victim is a college student who has accused her boyfriend, a popular baseball player, of raping her at a party.

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.

A frustrated crime scene cleaner...an off duty cop in a jam...a patrol officer who believes in a strange fate...a holier-than-thou Internal Affairs whose world gets turned upside down...plus those that are crazy, surrounded in sadness or just trying to get by - these are the many and varied characters of River City, brought to life in 17 short stories by the author of the River City crime novels. 

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.

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.