A murder during a therapeutic peyote circle sends former Santa Fe Police Detective Fernando Lopez on a quest to find a reliable account of what happened at the ceremony and then on a wild chase to Taos and Red River, where the pursuit comes to a violent end.

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Former Santa Fe Police Sergeant Antonio Blake has a history of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his time in the Marines during the First Iraq War. For help he turns to a quack psychologist named Frank Tate, AKA Doctor Ziggy, who treats his patients suffering from PTSD and anxiety with peyote, which contains mescaline, a psychoactive substance. During one peyote circle Blake has a flare-up and grabs another patient in the therapeutic group ceremony by the neck. At the end of the ceremony Dr. Ziggy accuses Blake of choking to death the other patient. In response, Blake goes into hiding and asks his friend, former Santa Fe Police Detective Fernando Lopez, to find the real killer. Lopez interviews the other patients in the peyote circle, who give him widely different stories about what happened that night. When evidence surfaces that points to Dr. Ziggy and his drug supplier, Joey Alhambra, both suspects flee to northern New Mexico. Lopez and Blake pursue the two suspects to Taos and then to Red River, where the pursuit concludes in a violent conclusion with some shocking surprises.

Emeritus Professor of English and Journalism at the University of Cincinnati, James C. Wilson lived in Santa Fe in the 1970s and wrote for the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Santa Fe Reporter. He has lived in Albuquerque since 2012. He is the author of twenty-one previous books, including Hiking New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon: The Trails, The Ruins, The History; Santa Fe, City of Refuge: An Improbable Memoir of the Counterculture and New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon: Photographing the Ancient City, in addition to Peyote Wolf, Smokescreen, Ghost Canyon, The Dead Go Fast, Painted Skull Ranch, Taos Gothic, Devil on Canyon Road, Taos Vendetta, Pecos Reckoning, The Witchcraft Murders, Santa Fe Assassin, A Death Demanded, and Stealing the Hopi Snake Dance, in the Fernando Lopez Santa Fe Mystery Series. He teaches a Mystery Writing Workshop regularly at the downtown Santa Fe Public Library.

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Website: https://www.southwestwriters.com/james-c-wilson/

Hardcover:
6 x 9
ISBN: 978-1-63293-758-2
142 pp.,$34.95

Softcover:
6 x 9
ISBN: 978-1-63293-757-5
142 pp.,$22.95

eBook:
ISBN: 978-1-61139-775-8
142 pp.,$4.99