Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries

Books 1-3 of the contemporary Native American amateur sleuth murder mystery series Spotted Pony Casino. Disabled veteran Dela Alvaro has investigation skills from her time in the service. She digs for the truth with help from her Umatilla friends and her connections with the FBI and Tribal Police to get justice for the victims.

Dela Alvaro is a disabled veteran who grew up on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation. When an IED in Iraq ended her military career, she came home to reassess her life and landed a job in security at the Indian run casino on the reservation. Not even a year into being the assistant to the head of security, Dela is promoted on a trial basis. When one of the casino employees is found stabbed and stuffed in a laundry chute, she knows she can kiss head of security goodbye if she doesn’t find the killer before the media gets hold of the story.

Dela Alvaro is the main suspect in the stabbing death of a man she stopped from beating his wife to death. The detective she abhors is ready to toss her in jail and not look for any other suspects. When FBI Special Agent Quinn Pierce is called in and Tribal Officer Heath Seaver is forbidden to work the case, Dela decides to find the killer.

When an employee at the Spotted Pony Casino is caught leaving early, Dela Alvaro, head of security, confronts the woman. The lies the woman tells only piques Dela’s curiosity. After witnessing the employee threaten a man, she is found murdered in her car parked in the driveway of her home.

Dela Alvaro, head of security for the Spotted Pony Casino, is asked to do a security check of a casino on the Oregon Coast. She no sooner starts her rounds at the casino and a child of a dubious couple is kidnapped. Special Agent Quinn Pierce of the FBI has been out to get the father for some time. One of Dela’s best friends from the Army is also at the casino and they catch up. The next morning, Dela finds her friend strangled.

The Spotted Pony Casino’s head of security, Dela Alvaro, receives a late-night call that takes her to a deserted walkway along the river. After confronting a woman babbling about love and bodies being buried, Dela stumbles over a corpse and discovers her knife covered in the victim’s blood.

A Fentanyl death. A missing woman. Dela Alvaro, head of the Spotted Pony Casino security, and Heath Seaver, a Umatilla Tribal Detective, join forces with the FBI to find Dela’s missing basket-weaving instructor and put a stop to a lethal drug flowing onto the reservation. The investigation turns deadly when an undercover FBI agent goes missing and the drug cartel’s girlfriend is out for Dela’s blood.