Showing results by author "Ben Rehder" in All Categories

The first three fun, fast-paced Roy Ballard mysteries, now in a single box set. This audiobook includes: Gone the Next, Get Busy Dying, and If I Had a Nickel.

Meet Roy Ballard, freelance videographer with a knack for catching insurance cheats. He's working a routine case, complete with hours of tedious surveillance, when he sees something that shakes him to the core. There, with the subject, is a little blond girl wearing a pink top and denim shorts - the same outfit worn by Tracy Turner, a six-year-old abducted the day before. When the police are skeptical of Ballard's report - and with his history, who can blame them? - it's the beginning of the most important case of his life.

Lennox Armbruster was struck by a speeding vehicle - but was it an accident or an insurance scam gone wrong? Roy Ballard is hired to find out, and he soon learns there’s a third possibility: attempted murder. Joe Jankowski, the man who hit Armbruster, is a tough-talking player in the construction industry, and a feud with one of his former employees has shown that he has a temper to match his brash personality. When Roy and his partner Mia Madison attempt to dig deeper, they learn just how far Jankowski will go to shut down their investigation.

Jeremy Sawyer was having a great time on a party barge on Lake Travis, and then he was suddenly nowhere to be found. Had he jumped? Fallen off? Been pushed? Roy Ballard - an expert in catching insurance cheats - intends to find out. After all, Jeremy Sawyer was the nephew of one of his biggest clients, and she can't shake the suspicion that it wasn't an accident. It isn't long before Roy and his partner Mia Madison begin to draw the same conclusion.

Does Caleb Dimmick really work at his father’s motorcycle dealership, or does he simply ride the payroll, thereby giving his dad a nice tax break? Roy Ballard, a legal videographer specializing in insurance fraud, is hired to find out. After just a few days, Roy is convinced everything is legit - until a dealership employee is gunned down in his own backyard, possibly by an assassin on an orange sport bike.

The trouble at the Conlee’s lakeside estate begins when vandals topple and destroy an expensive Italian fountain. Then they slash the tires and damage the paint job on a Jaguar. That’s when Roy Ballard's client, the insurance company, asks him to catch the vandal in the act and prevent future claims. Surprisingly, the homeowner, Norman Conlee, opposes the idea. He intends to address the problem himself by fencing the property and keeping his revolver handy. Eventually, though, he gives in, and Roy goes to work.

When the manager of a fast-food restaurant is accused of bullying an employee to the point of attempted suicide, Roy Ballard and Mia Madison are hired to document his behavior. As they look deeper, they learn that another employee quit abruptly a few months earlier and hasn’t been seen since. Did she really leave the state, as the manager claims? Roy and Mia simply want to confirm that she’s okay, but even her family members back home don’t have any answers. But Roy and Mia won’t stop digging until justice is served.

Kendyl Jordan is a beautiful woman who drives an eye-catching classic car—until the car goes missing, possibly with something of great value hidden inside it. Can Roy Ballard help her find it? Despite Ballard’s budding reputation, Kendyl learns he’s not even a private investigator, he’s a legal videographer with very little experience. Still, he seems to have a knack for the job, and it doesn’t take him long to ID a couple of dangerous suspects. That’s when the case takes more twists and turns than a winding Texas Hill Country road.

Bianca Rossington is leading the life she’s always wanted until an anonymous stalker begins to ruin it all. When the situation escalates from flowers and phone calls to a veiled death threat, Bianca hires Roy Ballard and Mia Madison, who have worked together for years and recently opened a private investigation firm. They quickly identify several possible suspects, but they also learn that their client might not be giving them the full story. Can Roy and Mia sort fact from fiction as the situation turns deadly and somebody attempts to scare them off the case?

Safari Adventure is a small but popular zoo that entertains visitors from all over Texas - until one morning when most of the animals escape and a body is found on the premises. Game warden John Marlin works closely with the sheriff’s office, at first to capture the animals, and then to solve the mystery of the missing zookeeper. But local good old boys Red O’Brien and Billy Don Craddock just might figure it all out first, after they pick up a hitchhiker with a questionable past and some inside information that makes him a prime suspect.

Alex Dunn owned one of the most valuable collections of hobo nickels in the world, and it appears somebody killed him for it. Now Roy Ballard and Mia Madison are hired by the insurance company to track the collection down, which means they might reveal the identity of the killer in the course of their investigation. But the more they dig, the more suspects they uncover, including Dunn's children, his ex-wife, and a buxom masseuse who takes a hands-off approach to the services she offers.

On opening day of dove season in Blanco County, Jimmy Ray Gladstone is confronted, then shot, by an attractive stranger with an unusual physical characteristic. But who is she, and how did she know about the robbery Jimmy Ray and his brother Russell had been planning? Game Warden John Marlin will have to figure it out on his own, because the sheriff’s office is stretched thin, Jimmy Ray has a head injury and isn’t making much sense, and Russell is nowhere to be found.

Ricky Delgado works as a chicken hanger at the poultry plant in Rugoso, Texas, a small border town just 30 miles south of Laredo. His quiet, illegal lifestyle is disrupted when he learns that his brother Tomás has been shot and injured shortly after crossing the border. Together, Ricky and Tomás and seek justice, or remain silent and endure the injustices common to all "wetbacks" within the states. Meanwhile, Ricky is fighting a battle within his own body, a disease he acquired in the poultry plant.

Charlie Dunbar had big plans for the summer break, but becoming a fugitive was nowhere on the list. Even more unexpected, his partner in crime is his own ailing grandfather. Now they're on the run, trying to make it across the country to see a special kind of doctor, while the world becomes mesmerized by their journey. They are the subject of heated debates on cable news channels. Thousands of people voice their support on Facebook fan pages. And Charlie's own parents appear on live TV to plead for him to come home safely. But Charlie isn't ready yet.

This box set includes two mystery novels written by Edgar and Shamus Award finalist Ben Rehder. Included are Buck Fever (first novel in the Blanco County mystery series) and Gone the Next (first novel in the Roy Ballard mystery series).

After a high-school football star dies in a late-night motorcycle collision with a wild pig, the boy's wealthy father comes up with a creative scheme to rid Blanco County of the feral pests: He tattoos the ear of one particular pig, then offers a $50,000 reward for anyone who shoots it. Game warden John Marlin is not pleased-chiefly because the bounty is likely to bring a wave of poachers and trespassers to the area. The tension rises even higher when the death of the local boy turns out to be more complicated than it originally appeared.

Sean Hudson thought nothing of hopping a fence to dig illegally for Native American arrowheads, spear points, and other artifacts. Did his thieving, trespassing ways get him killed? How else to explain the small pickaxe that was found sunk deep into his skull? Blanco County game warden John Marlin has dealt with these kinds of looters before, so it's no surprise when the sheriff asks him to assist with the investigation. Marlin quickly learns that this case - like the soil at a dig site - has many layers.

When televangelist Peter Boothe decides to build a megachurch on the banks of the Pedernales River, he thinks his biggest problem will be a few unhappy neighbors. However, when backhoe operator Hollis Farley unearths a rare fossil on the construction site - a discovery that could lead to plenty of embarrassing Darwinian publicity - the cover-up begins.

Welcome to Ben Rehder's Blanco County, Texas, where the right to bear arms is about to go very, very wrong. In Gun Shy, the National Weapons Alliance rally in support of every American's right to bear arms is meant to garner huge publicity. And the host of the event is none other than the NWA's newest spokesman, handsome country superstar Mitch Campbell. What nobody suspects is that the Stetson-wearing, gun-toting, bull-riding Campbell is a fraud.

It's the week before deer hunting season, as close to a statewide holiday as you get in Texas, and the locals are getting restless. Game Warden John Marlin has his hands full with poaching complaints coming in faster than he can write out-of-season tickets. Then a call of a different sort comes in. A man dressed up in some sort of deer costume has been shot at the Circle S ranch, and witnesses are reporting a massive wild-eyed buck prancing about the pasture in a lovesick frenzy.