Rich Curtin

Trails of Deception (Manny Rivera Mystery) Rich Curtin

From a distance, Deputy Sheriff Manny Rivera watches a group of protesters in downtown Moab. They are demonstrating against pothunters who defile ancient-Indian graves in search of valuable artifacts. At first glance, he judges them to be harmless. Then he becomes aware of a manifesto delivered to the local newspaper threatening stronger action in retaliation for the pothunting. Soon thereafter, a San Francisco artifact collector is found murdered in a remote part of the LaSal Mountains. In his backpack is a freshly-dug ancient-Indian pot. After that, events begin spinning out of control fast.     
Subsequent acts of defiant lawbreaking emphasize the serious nature of the protest. Rivera is assigned the job of tracking down the cold-blooded killer. His investigation takes him to a scientific research center, the home of a curandera and her grandson, a terminal patient at a charitable hospice, and an almost inaccessible part of Utah called the Big Triangle. The series of crimes threatens to derail Moab's tourist economy, so Rivera is under pressure to solve the case quickly. But clues are sparse and Rivera's well-honed sense of logic is severely tested.   To complicate matters, Rivera receives some unexpected bad news from his girlfriend Vivian Ramos, and he meets the man who will soon become his new boss, a man he instantly dislikes.