The Day of the Dead – El Dia de los Muertos – when Mexico celebrates its lost loved ones. But for disgraced newspaper reporter, Nick Vargas, and attorney, Beth Crawford, it is not an occasion to celebrate.

Nick, now a true crime writer, is determined to find the truth behind the slaughter of nuns in a deserted house in the desert, and Beth is desperate to find her younger sister, Jen, who disappeared without trace when they were on holiday in Mexico.

Their quest for the truth leads them to a small town in Mexico where a mysterious and malevolent cult are known to perform sinister and deadly rituals. And now Beth and Nick know that they are being watched, and that their enemy is waiting for the right moment to strike . . .

RELEASE DATE: June 2010

Behind the Scenes

This story started to take form in my mind after my wife and I took a trip to Mazatlan a few years ago. We were on a cruise ship and only had a few hours in the city, so we hired a young cab driver who turned out to be one of the most engaging people I’d ever met.

He took us on a tour and, at one point, pointed out a cave which he claimed led to a maze of underground tunnels that were used to hold prisoners over a century ago.   It’s very easy to get lost down there, he told us, so the entrance was caged and locked.

I walked away from the experience determined to set a book in Mazatlan and feature a cab driver very much like that young man.  Over the next several months the story started to take shape in my mind, but as these things go, it morphed into something else entirely.  The tunnels are still there, but Mazatlan is gone and the cab driver has become a minor character in the story — but hopefully a likable one.

The changes, however, have made this a much more exciting story than I originally envisioned.  Watch out for the twist…