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Today we offer you new books in two series. John Santana investigates the disappearance of drug money and sex trafficking, and Woodhouse Avenue’s Humboldt Prior tries to stop his cousins from going to jail because of bank fraud and creampie stinky feet.
“The price of life” by Christopher Valen (Santa Rita Press, $ 17)
Keeping her head down and her chin tucked into her chest, Santana moved in and hammered Grant’s midsection with a left / right combination. As the air escaped Grant, Santana pulled back and threw a short, right uppercut that hit Grant flush with the chin. – Extract from “The Price of Life”
There are three bodies in the bedroom of the plush house. Two are a married couple who live there and the third is Drug Enforcement Administration Officer Joel Ryker. Gone from the Vault: Half a Million Drug Money
Retail John Santana, searching the scene, realizes the blood spatter patterns that there must be a fourth person in the room, and he’s right. Ana is a young and beautiful Mexican who has been sexually trafficked and considers the backpack full of drug money to be her ticket to freedom.
So begins Christopher Valen’s eighth police case starring Santana, who was born in Colombia and knows about the Mexican cartels because one of them ordered the rape and death of her mother.
When the three bodies are discovered in a pretty neighborhood in Saint-Paul, Santana was working on the cold case of a young woman whose body had been found four years earlier at Pig’s Eye Regional Park.
Now Santana is paired with Bobbi Chacon, the partner of the deceased DEA agent who is determined to find Ryker’s killer. Her quick temper and her need for revenge mean that Santana has to keep an eye on her and her Glock. Then they find out that Ryker was stealing the money himself when the bullets started flying.
Where’s Ana and the missing money? Santana and Chacon want to know, and a sicario, a Mexican cartel killer who doesn’t hesitate to use his weapon.
Santana and her partner gain information about a Cathedral Hill mansion where a woman runs a high-class escort service that employs Ana. But she and the money are gone again.
Everything slowly falls into place, as Santana painstakingly follows the clues, never knowing if Chacon was in his partner’s plan to steal the money. While they are working on the case, their bosses cause them grief and there are internal feuds between the agencies. Meanwhile, indications are that a group of very wealthy local men were running a porn video operation using drugged women.
As the investigation continues, Santana becomes more and more convinced that the drug money is tied to the cold case he was working on at the beginning of the story. This is confirmed by hooded men in a dark barn.
Santana is an interesting character, methodical in her work, concerned about the young women used in videos, and reluctant to take senseless risks. The supporting characters, like Chacon and Ana, are believable and alive on the page.
Valen, the pen name of Jerry Peterson of White Bear Lake, will be signing copies of “The Price of Life” from noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday, October 16 at Once Upon a Crime, 604 S. 26th St., Mpls.
“Unicornery on Woodhouse Avenue” by Bob Garland (Gabbrolandbooks, $ 15.95)
Humboldt was enjoying a quiet afternoon at home in his townhouse. While worried about his current list of concerns, including the disturbing Buddy Prior radio show, the possibility that new comeback Tertius Prior was plotting something with his disreputable brethren Primus and Secundus, and that someone at Prior Leather was grinding up pieces of leather for who knew what an unpleasant purpose, he was enjoying some peace and quiet after a morning at the office. – From “Unicornery on Woodhouse Avenue”
Bob Garland, who is 80 and lives in Mendota Heights, announced in 2015 that he was ending his delightful four-book series featuring Humboldt Prior, besieged controller of Prior and Cousins Leatherworks, a former City company. -by-the- River, which certainly looks like Saint-Paul.
Luckily for readers, Garland changed his mind and released “Roughhouse on Woodhouse Avenue” and his latest, “Unicornery on Woodhouse Avenue”. (Woodhouse Avenue, which overlooks the city, is where the founder of the leather company built townhouses for various priority cousins.)
More readers should find this series entertaining, in which Humboldt Prior tries to keep track of the monetary schemes of his greedy cousins who are backed by a trust fund. The company hasn’t done business for decades, but all cousins still have titles. They spend most of their time trying to get rich by questionable means.
In “Unicornery …” there are three patterns. A cousin decides to use old moldy leather in the warehouse to make a foot cream with crushed hides. Three cousins, including two former defrocked pastors who preyed on the elderly, use their old donor lists for their new venture, persuading the elderly that they need help making large sums of money on the job. ‘foreigner. A third deal is for a small radio station that features one of the coarser cousins.
All of these dubious “companies” are part of Unicorn Associates, which specializes in high-risk IPOs known as unicorns. Unfortunately, most cousins have no idea of banking or high finance, and soon Humboldt must get to the bottom of the schemes of his relatives, at the center of which is Cousin Persistence, handsome, manipulative, and greedy. money, the smartest of the bunch.
With email help from his dear cousin Julia, who’s gone to research his government spy work, Humboldt untangles the tangles of greed.
Humboldt, a self-effacing bachelor, is a charming protagonist, his cousins are more goofy than threatening, and Woodhouse Avenue is a perfect little enclave that readers can easily imagine. It’s a perfect series for readers who are fed up with violence.
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