Drum roll, please! Graphic artist Matt Chase has created another signature piece of art for the next book in the Detective Emilia Cruz series, BARRACUDA BAY. Cover Reveal The background color was inspired by the cover for PACIFIC REAPER, which both Matt and I love,...
Just another day in paradise, except for the dead police lieutenant in the bottom of a speedboat drifting in the still waters of Puerto Marques, the small bay-within-a-bay on the southeastern tip of Acapulco. That's really when the story gets rolling for Detective...
In BARRACUDA BAY, the upcoming Detective Emilia Cruz mystery set in Acapulco, elections for mayor are coming up fast. Incumbent Carlota Montoya Perez, an enigma to Emilia, wants another term but faces a determined and well-funded rival. This is the second election...
With winds of up to 165 mph, Category 5 Hurricane Otis tore through Acapulco in late October, leaving a trail of unprecedented devastation. It strengthened so quickly there was little time to prepare for the strongest storm to ever hit Mexico's Pacific coast. In just...
She Said, He Said A CLIFF DIVER scene from Franco Silvio’s Point of View The Detective Emilia Cruz series is written from Emilia's point of view as the first female police detective in Acapulco. She's got some tricky geography to navigate in that position. Not only...
Mexico’s Truth Commission investigating the mass disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College may finally solve the 8 year old crime that inspired the Detective Emilia Cruz novel 43 MISSING. As more details are uncovered, it appears that...
A month ago, the catalytic converter was hacked out of my daughter’s car as it was parked on a street in Chicago. Apparently, thieves troll at night for older cars with catalytic converters because the precious metals inside--palladium, rhodium, and platinum—now fetch...
Mark Esper has written about his stint as secretary of defense during the last year of President Donald Trump’s administration in A SACRED OATH. Before the book came out this month, excerpts published in the New York Times revealed that President Trump, frustrated by...
Ellie Smart is a professional cliff diver, but not an adrenaline junkie. Riiiight. A native of Missouri and former collegiate diver at UC Berkeley, with a Masters degree in sports and exercise science, Smart is the only American woman with a permanent billet on the...
Imagine taking a nap on your sofa one afternoon, only to be awakened when the floor collapses, pitching you into a sinkhole. But it’s not a true sinkhole, it’s a tunnel built by drug cartel smugglers that runs under your house. This happened last week to a man in...
It only took 7 years, but the real truth behind Mexico’s most notorious true crime is finally coming out. 43 MISSING TRUE CRIME On 24 September 2014, students from the Ayotzinapa rural teacher’s college in the Mexican state of Guerrero—best known as home to the iconic...
Chris Reed, deputy editorial and opinion editor for the San Diego Union-Tribune, recently wrote a piece entitled “Add Mexico to Afghanistan, Iraq to list of nations U.S. has severely wronged.” I was surprised to find that the article centered on the views of Don...
What is Detective Emilia Cruz's origin story? How was the mystery series invented? Well, it started with poinsettias. Many, many poinsettias. The following is from the Author's Note in the new edition of CLIFF DIVER, the first book in the Detective Emilia Cruz mystery...
To get in the right mindset for NARCO NOIR, in which Detective Emilia Cruz goes undercover as a taxi driver to catch a killer, friends and I are sharing some outrageously memorable taxi rides. Which of these are you happy to have missed? Related: The True Story Behind...
“Women and glass are always in danger.” – Mexican proverb Imagine if Portland, Maine, or Greenville, South Carolina went missing, simply ebbing away like shadows in sunlight over the course of 14 years. The official count of people missing in Mexico since 2006 is...