Luis Montez, the Chicano lawyer with "hangdog charisma," was the last person seen with Rachel, the beautiful missing writer. Now someone's trying to kill him.

For Luis Montez, Denver attorney perennially on the edge of disaster, even a vacation can mean trouble. Mentally exhausted and severely banged up from his most recent misadventures, Luis accepts a friend's offer to relax on a Mexican beach.

But things just don't work out the way he plans. Rachel, the young and mysterious woman he meets on the beach, disappears, and when Luis returns to Denver to try to resuscitate his law practice, he finds a flashy and tough private eye pressing him for details. Rachel is a member of a wealthy, powerful family that will stop at nothing to find her-and Luis is the last person known to have seen her.

To keep the professional detective at bay, Luis embarks on his own investigation, one that takes him deep into the dark worlds of petty hoodlums, rich men's fantasies, and the underbelly of Denver's fringe literary community. In a novel that Publisher's Weekly said is permeated with "wonderful smells, sounds and flavors," Manuel Ramos weaves a compelling tale that has Luis Montez ducking bullets and firebombs, and uncovering ugly secrets hidden for years.