to track down an unknown killer on the loose in a rugged canyon on the remote western edge of Mesa Verde National Park, where ancient stone villages and secret burial sites, abandoned centuries ago by the Ancestral Puebloan people, harbor artifacts so rare and precious they're worth killing over. is the National Outdoor Book Award–winning author of the six–volume National Park Mystery Series for Torrey House Press, including , , and , and five other books. He is an avid outdoorsman who lives with his wife, an emergency physician, in southwestern Colorado.