The works of

Robert J. Rosenbaum

Western Slope  Mysteries...

Join the Journey


bob's writing style, blends realized fictitious characters with a  twist of real life history and threads of knowledge from his deep research of each subject, coupled with rich life experiences.


his two decades at the high country arrowhead community, just off the Alpine plateau road, plus frequent visits to his brothers hog farm in the Uncompahgre valley provided him a  perspective for writing about the area.


So grab a book and a canadian club and beer, and settle into a journey that will take you half way around the globe and back to the mountains and valleys of western colorado.

 In a Series

The Raid


When the DEA raids Jake Grummond's dairy in the early hours of an August morning, they find no drugs, but they cripple the dairy and the  agents behavior turn Jake's wife Mary Margaret into a basket case. With little help from the government and less from the legal system, Jake takes on the hunt for justice and tries to unravel the reasons for the raid...

The Bank Job




Bank robbers run a roadblock, killing the sheriff of a high country county and severely wounding a deputy, then disappear int the mountain snow. What begins in mid-December as a straightforward search for two crooks by late May becomes a tangle of people and motives  as former sheriff turned consultant to the state Bureau of Investigation, C. W. Blakenship, unravels a snarl of embezzlement, drugs and murder that climaxes with a forest fire and a dynamite-laden confrontation... 


Blood and Water


An old rancher drives his pickup into the flint river and doesn't survive. A straight forward instance of failing abilities - except there was no apparent cause for either the accident or his death. This bothers C. W. Blankenship and Jake Grummond, his occasional partner in crime solving. Their uneasiness turns to suspicion as the heirs quarrel over the ranch and an out-of-state resort developer angles for the ranchers water rights and bodies begin to pile up...

By Fire This Time



Colorado Bureau of Investigation consultant C. W. Blakenship's main adversary from the previous year's fight over the F- Bar ranch's water rights returns to the valley intent on finishing his destruction of the ranch and killing Blakenship, the only lawman who had ever come close to catching him. Jessie, Blakenship's wife, drawing on her Ute heritage calls him a skinwalker because of his ability to operate without being seen. The conflict draws in a number players -- some innocent, some not so -- culminating in a dramatic confrontation, the aftereffects of which ripple from New England through Texas to California...

Mountain Murder


Mountain Murder is the fifth entry in the Western Slope Mystery series. All are set in a fictionalized version of Colorado’s Western Slope.

Mountain Murder opens on a high plateau late on a December afternoon where a Colorado Parks Ranger is checking snowmobiles for current registration stickers. He is about to quit for the day when a new group appears. They don’t have stickers, current or otherwise. As he asks for identification, he is shot in the back.

The ranger’s death quickly grows from a county investigation to include C.W. Blakenship of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, then expands to three county sheriff departments, the state police, the DEA and the ATF...

This series can be found on Amazon!

Praise for Mountain Murder: High Country Mayhem

Automatic rifle fire quashed the holiday mood at the 

Hazel Lake Estates Volunteer Fire Department’s Annual 

picnic and fund raiser, leaving three dead and numerous 

wounded – including the community’s developer. 


C.W. Blankenship of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation

 was about to begin the fundraising raffle when 

pandemonium broke out, plunging him immediately 

into the hunt for the attackers. What follows is a long 

search for motives and identities, punctuated by 

more gunfire.

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This volume in the continuing story of CW Blakenship begins with a bang. The author brilliantly sets a snow-packed ski resort as the backdrop for a crime scene where the investigators must decipher their suspects’ movements while not being deterred by the elements. Blakenship has been faced with head-scratching cases before, but the author’s protagonist possesses a keen intellect while surrounding himself with friends and associates who complement his skills...

- Philip Zozzaro

The US Review

Praise for The Raid: More Than A Body Ought To Bear

The excellent plot of this book is particularly effective in the wake of past government agency raids at Ruby Ridge and Waco in the 1990s. Government overreach and police action have never been as topical as they are in the current environment. The protagonist is under a strain that could derail any individual’s existence as his business is endangered, his workers face deportation, and his immediate family physically and psychologically breaks down...

- Philip Zozzaro

The US Review