When Sheriff Bud Shumway gets a call to fly into Utah’s remote and mysterious Maze District to help recover the body of a man wearing a tuxedo, he has no idea that it’s only the beginning of a series of strange happenings, from a missing symphony orchestra to a ragtag boatman who seems to be from the long-ago past. Throw in a strange UFO-like aircraft, a group of pirates terrorizing rafters, a cafe that goes missing, an oboe case with an unfinished...

When ex-sheriff and watermelon farmer Bud Shumway learns that his job is on the line, he knows that big changes are coming, though he has no idea exactly what kind. And with his wife's new business running an air-based catering service, he knows she'll be too busy to help him figure out his now uncertain future. Add in the invasion of his little Utah town by a group of wanna-be Vikings, and his employment woes soon take backstage to solving a murder...

When a mystery writer from New York shows up in Sheriff Bud Shumway's little Utah town, he doesn’t think much about it, other than to note that she seems to be avoiding him. But when a famous opera singer, also from New York, shows up shortly thereafter, Bud begins to worry that fact might follow fiction after he discovers that the writer’s latest book is about the murder of an opera singer. Join Bud as he follows the pair into the wild and remote...

When ex-sheriff and watermelon farmer Bud Shumway learns his wife, Wilma Jean, wants to sell her cafe and become a backcountry pilot, he senses his world is about to change, and not necessarily in a good way. But Bud never guesses he'll soon be deeply involved in trying to solve the mysterious death of a crusty old Scotsman who, as he was dying, told Bud his killer was a witch's tongue. Bud soon becomes an unwilling witness to the frenzy surrounding...

When Utah Sheriff Bud Shumway gets a strange letter saying a perfect crime is about to be committed, he has no idea that it’s just the beginning of a series of cryptic happenings, from a body that goes missing to finding another that happens to belong to a popular local photographer. Throw in an assortment of plein-air artists, radio-control pilots (even a blimp!), Van Gogh aficionados (say that real fast), the Invisible Man, a strange canvas with...

When ex-sheriff and watermelon farmer Bud Shumway agrees to help out his friend, Sheriff Hum Stocks, as a deputy for the winter, he never guesses he'll soon be deep in the rugged and wild Dolores Triangle, trying to solve not only the mystery of a skeleton wearing knee boots, but also the murder of rattlesnake-hunter and wannabe rodeo clown, Chicken Bottoms. Set in the Dolores Triangle, that area defined by the Colorado-Utah border and the Colorado...

The crusty owner of a local rock shop has been killed in Utah's wildlands, and ex-sheriff Bud Shumway has been asked to return to his hometown to solve the crime. He reluctantly agrees, never suspecting the case involves an old childhood friend and a pair of mysterious Incan skeletons known as the Malachites. Set at the Slickrock Cafe, deep in the sandstone fins and domes of southeast Utah, this mystery will have you laughing, scared to death, and...

An old hermit has been killed in Utah's wildlands, and Sheriff Bud Shumway knows it's murder, even though some say it was a cougar kill. Others think it was done by a Bigfoot who has roamed the area for years, killing cattle and leaving people so traumatized that they never want to go into the wilderness again. But Sheriff Shumway can't afford to believe in Bigfoot, given the huge area he's responsible for, most of it wildlands.

An old rock hound has been killed in Utah’s wild lands, and ex-sheriff Bud Shumway knows it has something to do with black-market dinosaur bone thieves, even though his bumbling replacement, Sheriff Howie, thinks it has something to do with aliens. And after receiving a mysterious envelope containing a weird claw and a set of coordinates written on roll-your-own cigarette paper, Howie is determined to prove himself a capable sheriff, especially...