The Sonny Baca Novels

A New Mexican shaman and PI is up against a shape-shifting adversary who haunts his worst nightmares, in a “fascinating and absolutely eerie” mystery (Thrilling Detective). After a savage confrontation with his archenemy, Sonny Baca is confined to a wheelchair. The doctors don’t know if he’ll ever walk again—and now the Chicano PI is plagued by disturbing dreams of his female ancestors being abducted. The reality is even more chilling. In present-day Santa Fe, the mayor’s sixteen-year-old daughter has disappeared. The four black feathers found on Consuelo Romero’s bed confirm Sonny’s fears: Three more girls will go missing before Raven’s master plan becomes a terrifying reality. A charismatic, chameleonlike power broker who also possesses a shaman’s gifts, Raven lures radical environmentalists into committing terrorist acts under the guise of antinuclear protests. But his true agenda is to bring down Sonny once and for all. By obliterating Sonny’s dreams—the portal into the spirit world—he will destroy his past and his future. The only way to fight back is for Sonny to enter Raven’s own dream state. But can he rid the world of an evil that refuses to die? Rich in atmosphere and setting, this stellar series offers both edge-of-your-seat mystery and one man’s journey into the complex landscape of the soul.

A New Mexico PI tries to stop a cult leader’s murderous rampage in “a fascinating hybrid of detective story, adventure yarn, and shamanistic magic.” —Kirkus Reviews The world-famous International Balloon Fiesta of Albuquerque is one of the city’s most eagerly anticipated annual events and its biggest moneymaker. But when a woman plunges to her death from one of the balloons—foreshadowed by Sonny Baca’s vision of a body plummeting from the sky—Sonny’s sure it’s murder. The dead woman was the chief witness to testify against the cult implicated in the murder-for-hire of Sonny’s cousin Gloria, whose death still haunts him. In addition to motive, Sonny finds means and opportunity: a homeless family who saw someone push Veronica Worthy out of the hot-air balloon. Worthy was one of the four wives of Raven, leader of the sun cult, and a dangerous, shamanlike criminal who’s supposed to be dead. But the four black feathers found on the corpse are his calling card—clues to let Sonny know he’s alive and kicking. And his murder spree isn’t over. Now, led by his spirit guides, Sonny must race to stop a vengeful madman and save the woman he loves. From the American Book Award–winning author, this is “a completely entertaining mystery novel [that] offers two parallel lands of enchantment” (Booklist).

Four suspenseful southwestern mysteries featuring a Chicano PI in New Mexico, by the “extraordinary” author of Bless Me, Ultima (Los Angeles Times Book Review). These four novels starring detective Sonny Baca are set against the terrain of the American Southwest, blending its Spanish, Mexican, and Native American cultures. Zia Summer: Sonny Baca’s cousin Gloria is brutally slain, her body found drained of blood with a Zia sun sign—the symbol on the New Mexican flag—carved on her stomach. His quest to find her killer leads Baca across New Mexico’s diverse South Valley to an environmental compound and a terrifying brujo. Rio Grande Fall: A woman plummets to her death from a hot air balloon during Albuquerque’s famous Balloon Fiesta—and Baca recognizes it as no accident. Shaman Winter: Baca, confined to a wheelchair after a violent encounter, is haunted by chilling dreams, but has no choice but to go to work when the Santa Fe mayor’s teenage daughter disappears and the trail leads to a charismatic and dangerous shaman. Jemez Spring: A high-profile murder ignites a hotbed of political treachery and terrorist threats that take Baca to Los Alamos, pitting him against a formidable foe—and a nuclear bomb. Unrelentingly suspenseful, with vivid details of the physical and spiritual landscape of northern New Mexico, these mysteries are perfect for fans of Margaret Coel or James D. Doss and star “a fascinating hero” (Edmonton Journal).

A Chicano PI hunts his cousin’s killer in “a compelling thriller [with] a deep-seated respect for the traditions of a people and a culture” (Booklist). The great-grandson of a legendary lawman and gunfighter, thirty-year-old Sonny Baca hopes he possesses even a tenth of El Bisabuelo’s courage. But instead of cleaning up New Mexico by hunting down dangerous desperadoes, the struggling PI looks for missing persons and deadbeat husbands. The game changes when his cousin Gloria—the first woman Sonny ever loved—is brutally slain. Her corpse is found drained of blood. A zia sun sign, the symbol on the New Mexican flag, is carved on her stomach. Gloria’s husband, Frank Dominic, a politician making a run for mayor of Albuquerque, has a powerful motive for murder. But Gloria wasn’t the first victim. A year earlier, another woman was slain in the exact same way. Is a serial killer on the loose? Or is this the handiwork of some satanic cult? Feeling his cousin’s spirit crying out for justice, Sonny and his girlfriend begin a search that takes them across New Mexico’s polluted South Valley to an environmental compound in the mountains. As Sonny moves closer to the truth, he uncovers a chilling connection between his past and a very real and present evil . . .

Rudolfo Anaya's latest Sonny Baca mystery eerily reflects current events: it involves terrorists, environmental activists, and water rights in the Southwest.

American Book Award Winner: A novel of a New Mexico teenager’s journey of physical and spiritual recovery from the author of Bless Me, Ultima. When the story opens, the eponymous hero of Rudolfo Anaya’s novel is in an ambulance en route to a hospital for crippled children in the New Mexican desert. A poor boy from Albuquerque, sixteen-year-old Tortuga takes his name from the odd, turtle-shaped mountain that is rumored to possess miraculous curative powers. Tortuga is paralyzed, and not even his mother’s fervent prayers can heal him. But under the mountain’s watchful gaze, with the support of fellow patients, he begins the Herculean task of breaking out of his shell and becoming whole again. Drawn from personal experience and imbued with the phantasmagorical vision quests that distinguish Anaya’s work, Tortuga is a joyful, life-sustaining book about hope, faith, friendship, and love that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit in the physical world. “An extraordinary storyteller.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Winner, Modern Language Association Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies, 2006 Popular fiction, with its capacity for diversion, can mask important cultural observations within a framework that is often overlooked in the academic world. Works thought to be merely "escapist" can often be more seriously mined for revelations regarding the worlds they portray, especially those of the disenfranchised. As detective fiction has slowly earned critical respect, more authors from minority groups have chosen it as their medium. Chicana/o authors, previously reluctant to write in an underestimated genre that might further marginalize them, have only entered the world of detective fiction in the past two decades. In this book, the first comprehensive study of Chicano/a detective fiction, Ralph E. Rodriguez examines the recent contributions to the genre by writers such as Rudolfo Anaya, Lucha Corpi, Rolando Hinojosa, Michael Nava, and Manuel Ramos. Their works reveal the struggles of Chicanas/os with feminism, homosexuality, familia, masculinity, mysticism, the nationalist subject, and U.S.-Mexico border relations. He maintains that their novels register crucial new discourses of identity, politics, and cultural citizenship that cannot be understood apart from the historical instability following the demise of the nationalist politics of the Chicana/o movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to that time, when Chicanas/os sought a unified Chicano identity in order to effect social change, the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have seen a disengagement from these nationalist politics and a new trend toward a heterogeneous sense of self. The detective novel and its traditional focus on questions of knowledge and identity turned out to be the perfect medium in which to examine this new self.

Spanning a period of thirty years, a collection of eighteen short stories includes "Silence of the Llano,' "In search of Epifano," and "Children of the Desert."