The fourth volume in
my South American mystery novel series, "The Matador Murders", is complete and
ready to publish this summer, pending a few more rounds of editing, and
formatting of the front matter.
For those of you who’ve visited this blog and might be interested, this
is a preview of coming attractions.
There may be some minor changes between this and the final version.
In this installment of
the series Roger and Suzanne are back in Montevideo after being summoned from
Los Angeles by a late night phone call.
One of their friends is suspected of murder and needs their skills as
detectives to help clear him of the charges. Life for Roger, and especially for Suzanne, is more
complicated these days as they now have an infant son, Robert. The three of them, accompanied by
Robert’s nanny, Bruce, fly to Uruguay and the game is afoot. Before long we have our heroes directly
in the middle of a gang war, off for a quick trip to Chile to learn all about
the local crime scene, and meeting some unlikely allies in their mission. The book has lots of action, a good
whodunit storyline, guest appearances by several old friends and by an old enemy
from previous books in the series, "The Ambivalent Corpse" and "The Surreal Killer", and occasional opportunities
for sightseeing and eating regional specialty foods. I hope you all have as
much fun reading this novel as I had writing it. A short excerpt from the current draft of the book follows:
Chapter 1. Adios to a crooked cop
Early that day, Jose Gonzalez, in his usual
role as a detective on the Montevideo police force, had a loud and highly
acrimonious argument with his partner.
Martin Gonzalez, the partner, was proud of two things. The first was that he and Jose were not
related despite the common surname.
The other was that he was the ranking half of the partnership and could
say whatever was on his mind with no real fear of the consequences. Martin was in fact a Detective
Lieutenant and the officer with the second highest ranking in the detective
division after his Captain, fortuitously not named Gonzalez.
