Life Itself

Jose Daniel Fierro is Mexico's most celebrated author of police thrillers. He's about to become something more. In the graffiti-festooned mining city of Santa Ana, three hundred years of oppression has led to a radical people's government. The brutal ruling class waits for its chance to crash back in - while the town's police chiefs keep getting killed. On the theory that Jose Daniel is too well-known to be murdered, the man of letters is invited by the city leaders to be the latest chief. On a whim, he accepts.
Jose Daniel knows what Robert Mitchum would say when confronted by a beautiful, amoral woman. He knows how Ross Macdonald might describe an encounter with a hit man. But when it comes to handguns, fingerprints, and dead bodies, the mystery writer is woefully unprepared.
On his side he has a fearless marksman named Blind Man, a radio broadcaster who is also a master of propaganda, and an assortment of eccentric deputies. He needs them all. For gunmen interrupt his dinner with a hail of lead, a beautiful gringa turns up butchered in a church, and a fearsome killer is found slain in the center ring of a fleabitten circus. Now, in a web of madcap crime and deadly conspiracy, Jose Daniel is discovering the first essential truth about police work. Like life itself, the more you think you know the more you have to learn...