About this ebook
A riveting thriller by the author of A Venom Beneath the Skin starring “his fascinatingly flawed Salvadoran protagonist . . . [a] very human heroine” (Booklist).
A child dies on the border between California and Mexico. This is nothing new, but this death is different. Someone has taken body parts from the child.
FBI Agent Romilia Chacón, a Salvadoran American, follows this case into a world that swallows her with its horror, where children are bought and sold like cattle and shipped to men all across the country. The dealers in this blackest of markets have no moral barometer, only a lust for cash. And one among them has taken murder to a level beyond serial killing.
Romilia comes to this case already broken: the man she loved and yet had to hunt—drug runner Tekún Umán, a regular on the FBI’s Most Wanted List—is gone. Romilia has two friends, her partner—who lives a double life between the Feds and the cartels—and a bottle of booze. Romilia’s mother is on her back to get sober; her son drifts further and further away. And the killer is taking away pieces of Romilia’s life, day by day.
Praise for the Romilia Chacón novels
“A neat, Hitchcockian thriller . . . let’s hope there are real FBI agents as brilliant as Romilia Chacón.” —The Washington Post
“A story that is enlivened by an enigmatic protagonist one hopes to see again . . . one of the best novels—mystery or otherwise—you’ll read this year.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Sexy, fast paced and satisfyingly violent.” —Publishers Weekly
A child dies on the border between California and Mexico. This is nothing new, but this death is different. Someone has taken body parts from the child.
FBI Agent Romilia Chacón, a Salvadoran American, follows this case into a world that swallows her with its horror, where children are bought and sold like cattle and shipped to men all across the country. The dealers in this blackest of markets have no moral barometer, only a lust for cash. And one among them has taken murder to a level beyond serial killing.
Romilia comes to this case already broken: the man she loved and yet had to hunt—drug runner Tekún Umán, a regular on the FBI’s Most Wanted List—is gone. Romilia has two friends, her partner—who lives a double life between the Feds and the cartels—and a bottle of booze. Romilia’s mother is on her back to get sober; her son drifts further and further away. And the killer is taking away pieces of Romilia’s life, day by day.
Praise for the Romilia Chacón novels
“A neat, Hitchcockian thriller . . . let’s hope there are real FBI agents as brilliant as Romilia Chacón.” —The Washington Post
“A story that is enlivened by an enigmatic protagonist one hopes to see again . . . one of the best novels—mystery or otherwise—you’ll read this year.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Sexy, fast paced and satisfyingly violent.” —Publishers Weekly
About the author
Marcos M. Villatoro is the author of nine books. He has won numerous prizes, including two Emmy Awards for his PBS Television essays. His first Romilia Chacón thriller was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001.Villatoro was born in San Francisco and raised in Tennessee. He has spent much of his life in Central America (in his other country, El Salvador). Villatoro is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and now holds the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Writing at Mount St. Mary’s College in Los Angeles, where he lives. The Romilia Chacón books have been published in five languages: English, German, Russian, Portuguese, and Japanese.
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