Chance Colter Mysteries

Ex-cop Chance Colter meets with a mysterious and beautiful woman banker in Montreal. She implores him to find her missing brother who has disappeared from Minneapolis. With a deadline of six days before an important bank merger meeting at which the brother is required, Colter begins the search. Unbeknownst to him the woman also hired a competing group to locate her brother believing two groups will yield quicker results. But the other group see Colter as competition and tries repeatedly to eliminate him. It takes all Colter's cop skills to solve the mystery of the missing brother and thwart the attacks against him. The search leads to the far north woods of Minnesota in winter where Colter confronts his attackers and solves the mystery of the missing brother.

Conflagration is the fourth Chance Colter Mystery by Jeffrey Birch. A massive truck bomb blows up Chance and Tika Colter's business in Savannah GA. Miraculously, they are the sole survivors but Tika is gravely injured. Ninety-three people die in the explosion. Colter's first thought is to protect his wife. He secretly takes her to Zurich to hide. Initially, the FBI deems the bombing an act of foreign Islamic terrorists but soon discovers it was an assassination attempt on Colter. The FBI and Colter set out on separate paths to hunt the assassin and the mysterious person who ordered the hit on Colter. They track the assassination to a farm in Kansas. The assassin has a elaborate escape plan and flees to South America with the FBI and Colter is separate pursuit. Their efforts are thwarted by the kidnapping of the agents by Maoist guerillas. Colter is in a life and death struggle to capture the assassin and neutralize the client.

Chance Colter is again called upon to locate a missing man but in the wilds of northeast Montana. He feels unsuited to searching in the Montana badlands but accepts the assignment for the money offered. With a half Indian guide, he sets out to locate the amateur paleontologist, Ray Walker on the rugged and unforgiving lands. Unknown to Colter a pair of murderous criminals has also been hired by a mysterious person in New York to find the elusive amateur paleontologist and steal his astonishing fossil discovery. They leave a trail of bodies as they endeavor to beat Colter to Walker. As Colter and the criminals both close in on the elusive Walker, a deadly confrontation seems inevitable

After a visit from two FBI agents, retired Minneapolis policeman, Chance Colter learns that a mysterious assassin has targeted him and Anna Partanza for death. It is the same assassin he thought he had eliminated in Key West, Florida. To save his and Anna's lives, Colter needs to find Anna, protect her from the assassin and kill the elusive woman before she kills them. The chase takes them to Las Vegas and then to France to a final showdown at a remote French farmhouse. Anna had discovered she has a half-sister in France and seeks to find the child who is being held as a ward by the French Catholic church. Colter and Anna are led and mislead in their search to find the child. During their search, the assassin is one step behind.