"Alas, poor Mexico, so far from God, so near to the USA". Mexico president Porfirio Diaz
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The Ethnic Sleuth: New eyes to view the world
In New Mexico, where I’ve lived most of my life, the population has long been roughly half Anglo, half Hispanic. Distanced as we were from the East and West Coasts, a number of people didn’t even realize we were part of the United States. I once was complimented on the phone by a New Yorker for speaking “good English.” A few years ago in Pennsylvania I was introduced as living in Albuquerque, Mexico For our part, New Mexicans assumed that the country was made up of two groups of people. Those who had names like Ramirez were Hispanic. Everyone else—Asian, African, Greek, et al.—was Anglo. The rich multi cultural world of New Mexico has always enchanted me. I probably related more to the Hispanics in New Mexico than I did to the Anglos in Boston. Many, if not most Hispanics in New Mexico have ancestors who were here before the Mayflower dropped anchor. To me, the writer’s journey, which becomes the reader’s journey, is often a desire to explore the unknown. Writing and reading are wonderful tools for visiting different places, different times, and different frames of mind—they can provide different eyes through which to see the world. This is obvious in the popularity of science fiction and fantasy. One of the ways it’s entering crime fiction is through the ethnic sleuth. In creating Rachel Chavez for Thicker Than Blood, released in 2005, I wanted to give her depth. I wanted to give her the conflicts, the anguish, the triumphs of real life. Rachel is a recovering alcoholic focused on staying sober and keeping her parking garage in downtown Los Angeles financially afloat. She’s coping with the death of her mother and the gambling addiction of her charming Mexican father. When the head of a water agency is killed by a hit-and-run driver, and Rachel spots the guilty car in her garage, she rises to the challenge. But it wasn’t until I began working on Lifeblood, due for release in early 2007, that I found myself completely captivated by, and deliberately exploring, the ethnicity of my sleuth. In this sequel to Thicker Than Blood, Rachel Chavez, discovers two unconscious Mexican boys locked in a van in her parking garage. One is dead on arrival at the emergency room, the other is admitted to a nearby hospital. But when Rachel later tries to visit the survivor, the hospital staff claims there is no record of either child. I say the ethnic emphasis was unexpected because it happened in the writing, not the planning. Rachel began relating to the missing boy as a Mexican woman. She begins questioning her father about why he never taught her Spanish, never took her to visit his relatives in Mexico and learns that his family was wealthy, that his mother had purchased papers for him after a family feud and sent him to a sister in San Francisco. I remember thinking as the words flew out of my fingers, “Jeez! I didn’t know that.” My historical mystery Listen to the Mockingbird, set in New Mexico during the Civil War, which won a 2003 Eppie and is due for paperback release in early 2007, has an Anglo sleuth, but strong Hispanic influence from many lesser characters and much influence from a black woman, a major character who shares the sleuthing. My yet-to-be-published mystery/thriller Eye of the Mountain God also has a Hispanic sleuth, and deals primarily with Hispanic issues. In this story, Megan Montoya, an aspiring photographer, arrives in New Mexico—the land of her grandparents—with her deaf young daughter. She becomes embroiled in a dangerous plot when she discovers five emerald arrowheads wrapped in her morning newspaper.
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