Where the iced tea is sweet, the gossip is sweeter, and somebody always knows somebody who knows something they shouldn't.
“Some people notice things. Walt Kessler can't stop.”
Walt Kessler owns Hadley's Hardware on the square in Madison Wall, Texas. He's been there twelve years. He knows everyone, and everyone knows him — their habits, their grudges, the small things they mention without thinking. What they don't know is what he used to do before he came to Madison Wall. And he'd prefer to keep it that way.
But Walt has a habit he can't quite break. When something in his town feels off, he notices. And once he notices, he can't let it go.
A Madison Wall Mystery
Every Saturday morning, Dorothy Hillcrest comes into Hadley's Hardware for birdseed and whatever else she needs, and stays long enough to say something that Walt Kessler will be thinking about for the rest of the week. She's been doing it for years.
Then one Saturday, she doesn't come in. Then another.
When Walt asks around, the answers he gets are a little too smooth — and the only person in town who's spoken to Dorothy recently is Sheriff Darlene Ortiz, who mentioned, over coffee and without thinking, that the woman was sharp as a tack when she saw her three weeks ago.
Something doesn't add up. In Walt Kessler's experience, when something doesn't add up, it usually means someone was counting on nobody noticing.
Three books. One man who notices.
Coming your way starting May 2026.
Cozy mysteries from the slow-rolling pine country — where the diner waitress remembers your order, and the church ladies remember your business.
D.J. Whitfield writes cozy mysteries set in the slow-rolling pine country of East Texas, where the iced tea is sweet, the gossip is sweeter, and somebody always knows somebody who knows something they shouldn't.
D.J. Whitfield is a pen name. The actual human behind it is C.L. Stegall, who writes considerably darker fiction under that name and decided, after some reflection, that readers who finish a C.L. Stegall novel probably weren't the target audience for a cozy mystery set in a small Texas town. This is almost certainly true. A firewall seemed wise.
Walt Kessler — the quiet man at the center of the Madison Wall Mysteries — has a background that his author is not entirely willing to explain, partly for narrative reasons and partly because C.L. Stegall spent years in Military Intelligence and old habits die hard. Walt got the hardware store. He also got the instincts. It's a fair trade.
Bosco, the dog in the series, is written in memory of a real dog named Mei Mei, who was a very good dog and deserved more chapters than she got. She is missed.
Beauregard, the cat who serves as editorial consultant, is based on a real cat named Shoyu, who has never once asked to be involved in anything and yet somehow always is.
C.L. Stegall lives in Arizona and writes things that keep people up at night. D.J. Whitfield lives in East Texas, on paper, where the pines go on forever and the worst thing that happens is usually still pretty bad, but nobody's ended up in a shipping container. Yet.
You take your wins where you find them.
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— You'll only hear from D.J. when there's a book to share —