Sonora Crossing

July 23, 2012
James’s second Del Shannon novel improves on the promising first in the series, Nazareth Child (2011). When six-year-old Aurea Lara is kidnapped, her relatives turn to the feisty Tucson, Ariz., PI for help. Aurea’s Mexican drug-trafficker uncle, Santos Del La Cal, has seized the girl out of a belief that the mute child possesses powers of clairvoyance. After agreeing to take on the case, Del crosses the border, where she encounters vigilantes fighting Santos. Rescuing Aurea from Santos’s nearly impregnable fortress is job one, but Del must also come to terms with the murder of her former lover, Tucson cop Ed Jeski, after Jeski is gunned down in a motel room. James surrounds the passionate and determined Del, who comfortably occupies center stage, with plenty of interesting characters and a plot to severely test her will and ingenuity.

September 1, 2012
Will reaching over the Mexican border to recover a possibly visionary child bring answers to emotionally damaged female investigator Del Shannon (Nazareth Child, 2011)? Mexican drug lord Santos De La Cal believes that his niece, Aurea Lara, is a modern-day profeta, a prophet who can foretell the future even though she's only 6 and mute. Convinced that the pictures Aurea draws can help him find safe passage for leaders of his cartel from Mexico to their U.S. contact, he kidnaps Aurea in order to harness her supposed powers. Meanwhile, Randall Willingham, owner of Desert Sands Covert, Tuscon's own missing persons recovery agency, is concerned about his favorite employee, Del Shannon, who's been depressed by the murder of her former lover, Detective Ed Jeski. When Aurea's relatives come to the agency beseeching Del's help to recover their niece, she isn't sure why they want her in particular until she sees Aurea's latest work: newsprint cutouts of her face and Ed's. The hope of getting answers about Ed's death encourages Del to take the case, which instantly plunges her into the dangerous Mexican drug culture. Deep in enemy territory, Del finds a friend, and maybe more, in Francisco Estrada, leader of the resistance. Since even Nesto Parra, the captain of Federal Police, is owned by Santos and his men, she'll need all the help she can get to recover Aurea safely. Although Del is a powerful and competent woman, the constant descriptions of her physicality by male characters shadows this Western-meets-mystical mystery.

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