Borderland Mysteries
Enter the world of the Borderland, between El Paso/Ciudad Juárez and Boca Chica, where U.S. Marshal Gabriella Zamora, and her special team, operate in 2019. This period of political theater in Washington D.C. causes grave misunderstandings about the people and culture of these unique places that erupts in battles, revenge and murder.
La Frontera
If you like the flavor of Hispanic literary sagas like Don Quixote, House of Spirits, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Like Water for Chocolate coupled with the stark realism of Cormac Mc Carthy’s The Border Trilogy, you will love La Frontera.
Welcome to the mysterious realm of the Borderland…
A SUV carrying two El Paso Border Patrol Agents suddenly careens out of control. One man is thrown through the window to meet his brutal death, while the other stumbles from the vehicle to land in a heap as he slips into a coma. The year is 2019 and Washington D.C. spins political theater against innocent people.
U.S. Federal Marshal Gabriella Zamora is ordered to investigate. Assembling her team – Marshal Alex Ranslow, a Native American shaman with the innate ability to sense what others cannot; Sam DeSilva, an IT genius who uses the power of technology to peel back layers of data to unveil the facts; and Cyn Beauvoir, an ex-CIA operative skilled in exposing the criminal mind – Marshal Zamora’s quartet of skilled Federal Agents converges on the Texas border to find the truth.
Within hours of solving the mystery and averting an international situation, Marshal Zamora’s team face an even more terrifying challenge in the dense, multi-national industrial zones on both sides of the Rio Grande. A serial killer whose brutal attack on women working in the Mexican maquiladora of Reynosa, Mexico and McAllen, Texas is escalating into an economic and international dilemma. Moving through both the Rio Grande Valley area and the twin industrial plants of Reynosa Mexico, the marshals negotiate crime scenes where they find themselves thrust into a war involving drug kingpins, political enemies, and a psychotic mind. Operating with a thin veil of diplomacy, the Marshals find themselves in situations that test the strength, wit and courage of their team members. It will also be the catalyst that forces Gabriella Zamora to deal with past relationships that were, most likely, better off left for dead. Beaten and bloodied by the killer and his enablers, the marshals discover the power of Santa Muerte who answers the prayers of the dead crying for vengeance.
Hundreds of miles from their base of operations in El Paso, the marshals begin their trek home. Midway back in Del Rio, the Val Verde County sheriff, fearing a resurgence of a cartel known for murder and mayhem, enlists the U.S. Federal Marshals to investigate mysterious incidents at the Amistad International Reservoir. A fly fisherman whips his gray ghost lure on the calm surface of the Reservoir. A strange light shines from beneath the murky water, followed by a quake and formation of sinkholes. The startled fisherman witnesses fish float to the surface – dead from an unknown explosion. When the bass are joined by a dead diver, the fisherman struggles against a force determined to take his boat down, reaches for the corpse, and drags them both to shore. Laying in the dirt, the last thing the fisherman remembers is the face of a predator—a black jaguar that stares into his soul. Locals and tourists report seeing the ghost of an Aztec god and his deadly consort who they say roam the dam and reservoir in the form of a large, black jaguar. Going against superstition and a powerful, vengeful shaman, the marshals uncover a plot of monumental proportions tied to mysterious, ancient artifacts submerged beneath the deadly water of the reservoir.
…Travel with Marshal Zamora and her team from El Paso to Boca Chica and back
again. Come and experience La Frontera: its culture, food and life -- where
nothing is as it seems.
VIVA!
VIVA! – the twentieth century Mexican Revolution imperative LIVE! --inspires the artistic family and friends of the borderland marshals to start production of a new stage presentation about the early twentieth century Mexican Revolution that promises to be the Borderland’s answer to another, earlier revolution in the same hemisphere.
Just as Pancho Villa, Emillio Zapata, and other Mexican Revolutionaries desperately sought to forge alliances to strengthen their fragile positions to live another day, the U.S. marshals, now, more than ever, struggle with federal agencies jockeying for power along the borderlands. In their fight to maintain a power base for true justice, the marshals and their acquaintances experience drug set-ups and disruption of the most unique border crossing in the borderlands, Santa Teresa, where beef cattle are transported from Mexico to the U.S. daily. While investigating the death of one of the VIVA! actors in a cattle pen at Santa Teresa, a Federal Marshal is almost killed by a new, Russian cartel which seeks to stabilize the Mexican cartel chaos all along the River. The Gray Ghost cartel, first encountered at the deadly waters of the Del Rio reservoir, precipitates the end of Sandro Montalvo’s drug enterprise and offers Marshal Gabriella Zamora an alliance that she cannot refuse. With the Gray Ghost as her partner, she leverages her vicious balancing act with Border Patrol Chief Inspector John Lopez, a man bent on revenge from the beginning of the Borderland Mysteries. Once again Gabriella witnesses the power of Santa Muerta who answers the prayers of the dead, crying for vengeance.
VIVA! a shout to LIVE! On the verge of fracturing over the death of their friend, the marshals scream VIVA! where their new-found power echoes deep inside a cave in the west Texas desert and awakens the compassionate spirit of an ancient Native American tribe in the next book, La Cueva, book three of the Borderland Mysteries.
La Cueva
Spirit Eye, the three-thousand-year-old cave and home to the Texas Lipan Apache tribe, shelters its last inhabitant and only shaman, and unexpectantly becomes a sanctuary for U.S. Marshal Alex Ranslow who experiences severe heat stroke while wandering the west Texas desert.
Together the two shaman investigate a grave robbing scheme that is systematically taking ancient Native America grave goods and mummies for black market sales. The crimes, in violation of the 1990 NAGPRA, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, test the statute’s viability against bigoted Texas ranchers and black-market profiteers.
True, the Lipan Apache shaman, and Alex encounter a well-organized caravan of Mexican American women, also wandering the west Texas desert for a completely different purpose, in route to major craft fairs in Texas where they will sell their home-made jewelry and desperately needed medications to the women of Texas who suffer from lack of health care facilities.
La Cueva offers shelter to those who embark on compassionate missions and stand for the sanctity of the tribe’s ancient ones. But how will La Cueva withstand rising forces in the borderland?
Welcome to La Frontera.
Stay tuned for additional Borderland Mysteries which will be announced soon!
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Praise for Borderland Mysteries