Luis Montez Mystery

Chicano attorney Luis Montez has had a bad year and is relaxing on a Mexican beach with a beer in hand when Rachel Espinoza introduces herself and spreads her blanket-and very attractive bikini-clad body-next to him. They're both staying at friends' nearby houses and have heard of each other. He looks for her in the following days but doesn't see her again. Back in Denver, Montez is approached by a private detective, Conrad "Rad" Valdez, who's working a missing-persons case. Apparently, the lawyer was one of the last to see Rachel. The two Mexican Americans from different generations begin to share information, and Montez learns Rachel was adopted by the very wealthy Vargas family after her birth mother died in labor. Oddly, she believed that Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, a radical Chicano writer and activist, was her real father. She had made plans to meet him, even though he disappeared in 1974! As Montez works his own cases while continuing to unravel more about the missing woman, he learns that the young detective had a relationship with her. Could Rad have had something to do with her disappearance? And was the firebomb thrown into Denver's community bookshop-that killed a writer friend-connected to the case? Nothing is as it seems, including the Vargas family secrets that soon threaten Luis Montez and his own father! The fourth installment in Ramos' Luis Montez Mystery series of five novels follows the compelling search for Rachel Espinoza while introducing readers to another chapter in the Chicano civil rights movement.

Luis Montez despises Harry López, a con man he has represented many times and who still owes him money. But when the petty criminal asks him to consider taking on a distant cousin as a client, the lawyer sets aside his distaste because he needs the money. Montez meets with Fermín Santos, a wealthy rancher from the San Luis Valley, whose son Dominic has been imprisoned again. He is accused of threatening a neighboring Anglo rancher-who also happens to head up the water company. The Santos patriarch has been fighting for water rights for decades. His land sits above a huge aquifer, but rights were lost generations ago, and the water is exported to other parts of Colorado and even California. Before Montez can even deposit the retainer, Santos' son is killed in a jailhouse riot. Dominic's wife convinces the attorney to keep the check, claiming she needs his help to avoid more violence. Against his better judgement, Montez agrees to travel to the valley to investigate. There, he is attacked in a bar's parking lot, badly beaten and left for dead. Is there more going on than rights to the liquid gold below the earth's surface? Originally published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2003, this riveting read about an issue that has become even more relevant as the planet heats up is the fifth and final installment in the Luis Montez Mystery series.