MURDER
in LA PAZ
by Murdoch Hughes
A Rick Sage
Mystery - Set in Mexico
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MURDER
in LA PAZ |
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Review |
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The Gringo Gazette North - Baja Norte's English Language Newspaper |
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Every Baja lover knows that La Paz is the most peaceful and quiet city in
Baja. Well, it used to be,
until Rick Sage rumbled into town on his Harley hog wearing a blood red
bowling shirt embroidered with flames across the back.
Rick Sage is a tough and flamboyant private eye, Baja’s
expatriate answer to Sam Spade, Travis McGee, or Dirk Pitt.
Murder in La Paz is the first installment in the upcoming Rick Sage
mystery series, which will feature our favorite detective prowling around
all kinds of exotic places in Mexico.
Like everyone else, Rick Sage moved to La Paz to get away from the stress
and violence of his former career as a private eye in Los Angeles.
Sage is enjoying a fabulous lifestyle of cocktails and sunshine
with his beautiful German girlfriend, Antiay, when suddenly the lovely
lady is murdered! Sage is
plunged straight back into his old detective habits, and he is the only
person in La Paz that can find her killer. Certainly the Mexican Federales are too incompetent to
solve any crime, and anyway they think Sage is the main suspect.
Our hero has plenty of dust-ups with the cops, but fortunately
these things can be “arranged”, especially with the help of Sage’s
good friend the Governor.
The poor Governor has plenty of problems of his own, since La Paz has been
chosen by the Mexican government to be the guinea pig for an experiment in
legalized casino gambling. Some
mighty shifty characters are hanging around, including a dopehead surfer,
the head of the US DEA, Antiay’s mysterious “sister”, and an East
German G-man on board a luxury yacht anchored in the harbor.
Sage has to move fast to stay ahead of this crowd, and he rides his Harley
hog all over La Paz, dropping by all of his favorite gin joints, then
cruising out to the Pichilingue docks, and over to Cabo San Lucas, where
he stops off at the infamous Hotel California.
Baja lovers will recognize all of their old stomping grounds in the
background of the action.
The plot moves thick and fast, and Murdoch Hughes even has a few Dashiell
Hammett-like moments with his hard-boiled prose. Down at the police station, the hero encounters “a fresh
tag-team of four gorillas who made television’s pro wrestlers look like
computer techies”. He can
always spot a DEA agent, since “they stand out like a birthday clown at
a tea party”. Dead bodies
are “just another murder victim, an object, like an expensive piece of
broken furniture”. This
dead-eye Dick writing style livens up the whole novel, making it a fun and
quick little poolside read.
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