Home Killings: A Romilia Chacon Mystery

Marcos McPeek Villatoro. Arte Publico Press, $12.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-1-55885-336-2

Home Killings, a slick, elegantly crafted mystery from creative writing professor Marcos McPeek Villatoro (The Holy Spirit of My Uncle's Cojones), mixes practical-minded Latina feminism and Latin American myth with the international drug trade. When rookie detective Romilia Chacon connects her first investigation to a serial killer already in jail, Nashville's police department isn't happy. The wry, likable heroine's astute and dogged detection seems to make some public figures uncomfortable.

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