Sheriff Dan Doesn't Approve (But He Left the File Where You Could Find It)

There is a particular kind of character I love to write.

Not the obvious ones — not the witty protagonist or the scene-stealing eccentric aunt. Those characters announce themselves. They walk in and demand your attention and they earn it.

No, the characters I love most are the ones who seem to be standing to the side of the story, arms crossed, quietly disapproving of the entire situation — while also, if you're paying attention, doing absolutely everything in their power to make sure it turns out all right.

Sheriff Danuwoa Stone. Blackvale County. 51 years old. Miles's father. The man Cressida calls Sheriff Dad while he pinches the bridge of his nose and wonders, not for the first time, how his life ended up like this.

Who He Is (What He Lets You See)

Dan Stone is a full-blooded Cherokee man who has spent thirty-plus years being the most reliable thing in a county that desperately needs one. He built his reputation on steady fairness and the willingness to take the hard calls at any hour — he will show up at 3 a.m. if someone's kid is missing. No hesitation. Just boots on, out the door.

He is stoic. Deeply observant. Speaks in clipped, measured sentences with pauses between them that do a lot of work — because when Sheriff Dan pauses, he's not struggling to find words, he's deciding exactly how much of what he's thinking he wants to hand over.

He drives an aging Ford Bronco he absolutely refuses to replace. "Still runs fine — unlike half the deputies," is what he says when anyone brings it up. He says it with the same flat delivery he uses for everything, which is either dry humor or complete sincerity, and half the time you genuinely can't tell.

His uniform is always pressed despite its age. His hands are calloused. His face has the particular quality of someone who has seen a great many things and made peace with most of them.

He has, famously, been losing at poker to Sylvia Vale for decades. He suspects cheating. She offers him more bourbon. The game continues.

Who He Is (What He Keeps to Himself)

What the sheriff doesn't advertise is the rest of it. That he is proud of his son in a way that moves through him constantly and surfaces almost never, because Dan Stone was raised by people who showed love through presence and action and not through words, and he hasn't fully figured out how to make up that distance.

That he has known Cressida Vale since she was a wild little girl coercing Miles into investigations — and that from the very beginning, he saw in her the same relentless curiosity that worried him most about his own son. He's harder on her than he needs to be, sometimes. Because she won't stop. He knows she won't stop. He'd rather she learn to do it smart.

That he has a habit — never acknowledged, never discussed — of accidentally leaving case folders in places where Cressida and Miles can find them when investigations hit dead ends.

What Dan Stone Taught Miles

Miles Stone is a cognitive scientist, a Peace Corps veteran, a conflict resolution consultant, and a man with a memory for personal detail that borders on uncanny. He came by most of those things through his own choices, his own curiosity, his own restlessness.

But the foundation. The foundation is Dan.

✦ The Things Miles Learned From His Father ✦

• How to be present without needing to fill the silence.

• That the most important information is usually what someone isn't saying. Listen to the hesitation.

• That showing up is its own form of love. Maybe the most honest one.

• That the community you're rooted in is not a limitation. It's the reason.

• That some people will never say the thing directly. You learn to read what they do instead.

Miles would tell you, if you asked, that he and his father don't always understand each other. And that's true. Dan doesn't fully understand the interdisciplinary curiosity, the Peace Corps years, the private investigation practice. Miles doesn't fully understand his father's patience with a system that doesn't always move at the speed justice requires.

But they are, unmistakably, two sides of the same coin. Dan's version is duty and tradition. Miles's version is understanding and meaning. They arrive, most of the time, in the same place.

Which is probably why, in the second case, when Miles pulls on a thread that Sheriff Dan has quietly left dangling — neither of them will say it's intentional.

What's Coming

There's a new nightclub in Blackvale. An old mill renovated into a modern lounge with a vintage edge. A grand reopening. A packed crowd. A singer who grabs the mic and dies.

The owner calls it an accident. A freak electrical surge.

Miles doesn't buy it. And this time, the thread he's pulling leads him and Cresida into old legends, even older grudges and the particular way that Blackvale ghosts refuse to stay put.

The Speakeasy Curse is a great story. Miles is starting to think it might also be a cover.

The Case of the Ember Mill Haunting arrives July 28, 2026. In the meantime — meet Miles's father in Book 1. He's worth paying attention to.

Buy Book 1

Pre-order Book 2

— J.P.