The Ed McAvoy Mystery Series

Even with a left leg shattered by a drug dealer's bullet and a medical retirement from the Detroit Police Force, former homicide captain Ed McAvoy feels he’s too young to be put out to pasture. True, he thinks, being Police Chief of Peekamoose Heights, a quiet, sleepy little village in New York’s Catskills, will be a far cry from what he has been used to, but it still will be police work—his first love. Besides, McAvoy reasons, the chief's job will also afford him the opportunity to pursue his second love—trout fishing. With the slower pace in the Catskills, being Chief of Police in Peekamoose Heights will be sort of like running a country club, or so he thinks. After all, how much crime can there be? Some occasional petty theft, maybe a little vandalism, perhaps a few drunk-and-disorderly incidents? And every so often, he figures, someone might die—but, then, it probably will be an old person whose time has just run out, or a victim of an unfortunate accident. McAvoy soon discovers that his skills as a homicide detective will not atrophy from lack of use in Peekamoose Heights. Murder, as it turns out, is an equal-opportunity crime that not only resides in large bustling cities like Detroit, but in sleepy little Catskill villages like Peekamoose Heights as well.

Stream of Death - An Ed McAvoy Mystery

In Stream of Death, the first book in the Ed McAvoy Mystery Series, the famed Isabela Pendant disappears amid a hail of machine-pistol bullets during the closing days of WWII in Sicily. When it temporarily resurfaces in Detroit after fifty-some years, six people are murdered. Now, four years later, a dog has dug it up in the woods near McAvoy’s peaceful Catskill village of Peekamoose Heights.

Hickory, Dickory - An Ed McAvoy Mystery

In Hickory, Dickory, the exciting sequel to Stream of Death, McAvoy's friend Sam Douglas has bought a Queen Anne tall-case clock at auction—at a bargain price. Trading it to Kate Winthrop for her lesser-quality Massachusetts tall-case clock and then selling the Massachusetts to a third party sight unseen seems to bode well for the Catskill antique dealer—until the third party winds up dead and, in her dying breath, identifies Sam as her attacker.

Encore to Murder - An Ed McAvoy Mystery

In Encore to Murder, the suspenseful prequel to Stream of Death, a former fashion model runs her car off a cliff at the Ashokan Pass on the outskirts of Peekamoose Heights in New York’s Catskills—or has it been made to look that way? What McAvoy suspects and what he can prove are two different things. But the retired big-city homicide detective, and now newly-hired village Chief of Police, has a few tricks up his sleeve that may lead him to that proof.

Wash and Wear - An Ed McAvoy Mystery

In Wash and Wear, the fourth Ed McAvoy Mystery, a bank teller and owner of a small Catskill print shop is killed by a known mob hit-man who, in turn, is killed by Heather Larrabee, a Peekamoose Heights Police Officer. Now Heather's house and car have been searched, as well as the teller's aunt's house. McAvoy must find what the mob is looking for before someone else gets killed in the process.