Deaf Row

True-crime writer (ShadowMan: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling) and novelist (“Jefferson Morgan” series) Franscell returns to fiction with this title, after nearly 20 years. Retired Denver homicide detective Woodrow “Mountain” Bell settles in the small mining town of Midnight, CO. Troubled by his past, especially with the lack of a relationship with his daughter, he is making the best of it. He has a girlfriend, a hobby, and a group of retired friends who call themselves Deaf Row, led by Father Bert Clancy. When a friend asks Bell to visit a resident of the Old Miners’ Home, he receives a confusing message that may be a clue to a decades-old unsolved murder. Reluctantly, he investigates. Several Deaf Row members lend their expertise, and they discover other unsolved murders that have continued over the decades. As Bell and his aging cohort try to identify a potential serial killer, Bell struggles to find peace with what he sacrificed in life for his career.