Daniel "Sticks" Hetrick Murder Mysteries

When a lonely widow finds the severed head of an unknown young woman on her front porch in rural Swatara Creek, Pennsylvania, Police Chief Aaron Brubaker is baffled. Anxious to conceal his ineptitude from municipal officials, Brubaker (whose experience has been largely limited to policing weekend drunks and speeders) strikes a deal for former chief Daniel "Sticks" Hetrick to come in as consultant. Hetrick, bored in an enforced early retirement, has a broader background, including a stint as a State Police criminal investigator and is eager to prove his ability to one particular supervisor. In tracing the ID of the victim, Hetrick discovers a link to a major theft of rare ornithological books and a trail that leads from Philadelphia to his hometown where he is forced to confront danger and the darker side of his community and its residents.

A rash of animal mutilations and a vicious poison pen campaign directed against an ambitious young lawyer lead to murder in a rural Pennsylvania community. Dan 'Sticks' Hetrick, retired police chief, and Flora Vastine, a novice officer, team up and encounter false leads, a series of dangerous episodes and another murder before the case is resolved.

Retired police chief Daniel 'Sticks' Hetrick, still serving as unofficial consultant to his less experienced successor, has another murder to deal with in rural Swatara Creek, Pennsylvania. It soon develops the death of a local waitress is not the only trouble in the township. An elderly man has been seriously injured in the latest of a string of burglaries from the Amish, the burglaries may have a connection to unscrupulous antique dealers, there are items missing from the police department evidence room and rumors are circulating of drug dealing. What-if anything-does all this have in common? Could it be the strange Amish girl who may, or may not be, Flora Vastine's new friend?

Some believe violence foreign to our nature. Dan 'Sticks' Hetrick, retired chief and now consultant to the Swatara Creek police department, knows better. We put a lid on our natural tendency to violence when we started living in groups, devising moral codes to hold it in check and allow us to live in harmony with others. But, deep down in the id-the site of instinct-there's always that tendency to violence. When an out-of-state reporter is found murdered at a disreputable bar the tendency to violence spirals in the rural Pennsylvania community, and the investigative trail keeps bringing Hetrick and his team back to the family of a wealthy doctor who has come home to retire. Hetrick and his protégé Officer Flora Vastine are joined by an old friend from his State Police days as they unravel old secrets and mysteries in a tale with as many shocking twists as a country road.

Trouble follows Sticks Hetrick when he and Anita Bailey, the new woman in his life, go on a Caribbean cruise. Though he has no jurisdiction, Hetrick assists a Jamaican police inspector investigate two murders, which have roots back home in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Officer Flora Vastine, Hetrick's protégé and the team in Swatara Creek, are probing mysterious assaults on young women, which will put Flora's life in jeopardy. Both Hetrick and Flora will learn the past has consequences, which can't be denied.