Dana Forsythe Mysteries Books in Order

The Dana Forsythe Mysteries move Stan Jones's crime fiction from Arctic Alaska to the heat and glare of Palm Springs, California. Written with Mary Wasche, the series follows Dana Forsythe, a former police officer who becomes a private investigator after her husband, Frank, is killed on duty. Dana is grieving, angry, capable, and not interested in being handled gently.

The first novel, The Sand Garden, starts with a shock that makes Frank's death even harder to carry. Dana learns that he had fathered twins with a secret mistress, who has now been murdered. When the orphaned children are left on Dana's patio, her personal life and her work collide fast. An attorney then hires her to help defend the person accused of killing the twins' mother, drawing Dana into a case with far more moving parts than it first appears.

Palm Springs matters as more than a sunny backdrop. The story looks beyond the resort image to a desert city shaped by money, privilege, nightlife, precarious lives, and people who would rather keep uncomfortable truths out of sight. Dana has to navigate those contrasts while deciding what she owes to Frank's children, to the dead woman she never knew, and to the facts of the case.

The desert can hide plenty.

Dana's cases are built for readers who like a detective with a personal stake in the answers. She brings police experience to her new work, but being a private investigator gives her fewer protections and more room to push where official investigations may stop. Her grief is part of the series foundation, not a side note, and it raises the stakes whenever a clue threatens to reshape what she believed about her marriage.

The tone is a contemporary private-eye mystery with a sharp family dilemma at its heart. Expect a close look at relationships, secrets, and the social divides that sit beneath Palm Springs's polished surface. The Sand Garden is the natural starting point, since it introduces Dana, her loss, the twins, and the personal questions that drive her first investigation. It is a good fit for readers who want a detective story with both a murder to solve and a complicated new family to face.