ANN SAXTON REH
Writing Mystery and Memory of Place
In the ruins at Persepolis
The David Markam Mysteries
It is the 1980s, when technology and social change were rivulets, just beginning to grow into the torrents that swept us into the 21st century.
Foreign Service Officer David Markam is known for his negotiating skills in these troubled times, though, on occasion, he may skim close to the boundaries of proper diplomatic procedure.
When a situation needs special handling in South Asia or the Middle East, David is the man his colleagues call.
Journalist Katherine Darius was famous for reporting from front lines in the Algerian War of Independence. Why did she suddenly vanish in Arabia without a trace?
After eight years, her daughter Layne, an ethnologist, is finally able to get into the country to discover what happened to her mother. At once, she knows someone on this desert does not want that question answered.
Diplomat David Markam comes to her rescue, and they both are aware of an attraction as powerful as it is impossible. Amid the upheavals of technological and social change, Layne pursues an unknown killer, and David risks his career and his life to keep her from dying as her mother did.
Meditating Murder [New edition coming soon.]
When his passion for ancient ruins puts him in the path of a terrorist's bullet in Istanbul, David is at a personal and professional crossroad.
His mentor, retired ambassador Gerald Fitzwilliam, invites him to convalesce at his estate on California's Mendocino coast, and David hopes it will be the respite he needs to decide where his life is going.
What he finds is a collection of looted antiquities, houseguests with a tangle of secrets, and somewhere in their midst, a killer.
A Killing in Kasauli [Due later this year]
Why does a stolen village goddess summon David Markam to the hills of
Northern India?
The death of a servant girl, rising discontent among the lower castes, and a multi-national struggle for a piece of the nascent computer industry all impact David’s efforts to extricate Layne Darius from a charge of theft and then murder in the village where she is studying tribal culture.
An even greater challenge emerges as his love for Layne blazes into life again and threatens
to overwhelm him.