Pen Name:
None
Genre:
Articles, Essays, Memoir, Mystery, Short Stories, Suspense
Websites:
JackMatthews.net
SWAmericana.com
Bio
Jack Matthews spends his time between Fort Worth, Texas, and Taos, New Mexico. He is a member of American Quarter Horse Association and writes in the contemporary mystery genre set among the Pueblo, Hispano, Anglo, and Mexican cultures of northern New Mexico.
Jack’s early years were spent in central Texas, particularly around Brownwood, San Saba, and Cherokee. His extended family owned over 3,000 acres of land in several counties where he grew up along the Colorado, Cherokee Creek, Rough Creek, and Pompey Creek waters. “I was fortunate as a child and teenager to have access to my uncles’ ranches and my step-dad’s land where I learned to ‘live with’ the land, not just on it.” Jack has several unpublished short stories about San Saba and Rough Creek.
For forty-seven years, Jack taught at several colleges and universities, including tenures at Amarillo College and Cisco College, lecturer at Texas Christian University, and adjunct instructor at University of Texas at Arlington, Tarrant County College, and Texas Wesleyan University. His coursework included history, anthropology, government, and Native American history. With the Texas Tech Anthropology Department, he took his archaeological field school work at Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, New Mexico.
Books
Title: Arroyo of Shells, A Pueblo Tribal Police Mystery
Publisher: Sunstone Press (2024)
Genre: Hard-boiled, Noir Mystery
As fall descends and winter approaches the small northern New Mexico town of Ojo Verde, people tend to bookshops, wait tables, and take care of livestock, while Tulona Puebloans prepare for the Still Time of their calendar. Beneath quiet rhythms, however, crimes occur. The Franklin Deerfield Museum has been robbed of a prehistoric medicine bundle associated with the extinct Hanging Shell Pueblo. A Navajo ceremonial mask is also missing. Richard Tafoya, a Tulona tribal policeman, and Janet Rael, a U.S. Forest Service biology specialist, seek to apprehend three thieves associated with the museum heist. Unbeknown to them, the thieves seek to use the medicine bundle to revitalize the Hanging Shell kiva culture, challenging the harmony of Tulona Pueblo. A murder in the high country of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Angel Fire seems, at first, to be unrelated to the museum theft. Tafoya and Rael identify one museum thief and eventually confront the murderer at the pueblo, but justice does not play out until mystical, but explainable, circumstances bring truth to light. Includes Readers Guide.
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Title: Death at La Osa: A Pueblo Tribal Police Mystery
Publisher: Sunstone Press (2021)
Genre: Hard-boiled, Noir Mystery
North of Taos, New Mexico, an unidentified murder victim wearing a belt with a turquoise buckle of rare dendrite quality is discovered on the edge of the Tulona Reservation. Tribal policeman Richard Tafoya takes charge of the investigation to determine the identity and killer. Tafoya meets Forest Service biology specialist Janet Rael as he follows leads from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the Navajo Reservation in the west. Within a social interplay of Puebloan, Hispano, and Anglo cultures, Tafoya searches for the kill site to unravel the strange numbers on the back of the turquoise stones. The Tulona Pueblo’s ceremonies of racing and pole climbing on Feast Day provide a mystical overlay to the chase. With the aid of a Navajo medicine man and a cartographer with the Bureau of Land Management, Tafoya and Janet discover not only the prehistoric turquoise mine, but also the killer. Along the way they brave high mountain altitudes, desert mesas, National Forests, and sharp changes in weather from desert heat to snow and rain. Includes Readers Guide.