Blood Lake - (Filomena Buscarsela Mystery) by Kenneth Wishnia (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"The Ecuadorian Andes is one of the few places on earth where you can get a sunburn and freeze to death at the same time."

When New York City PI Filomena Buscarsela takes her teenaged daughter, Antonia, to see their extended family in Ecuador, it's more than a homecoming. Filomena hasn't been back in years, and the trip brings back memories of her previous life as a revolutionary.

Before she's even had time to adjust to her new surroundings, a priest is murdered, a man who, years ago, saved her life and helped her escape to the United States. She owed him her life; now it's time for the debt to be repaid, and she vows to find his killer. It's an election year, and the dirty hands of politics seem to be everywhere, perhaps even in this senseless death. Filomena's investigation promises to lead her back to the very people she escaped, all those years ago.

As the country is wracked by natural and man-made disasters--landslides, floods, food shortages, protests, crackdowns--Filomena becomes a fugitive from the law, racing across the country toward a climactic confrontation in the Amazon jungle. Wishnia provides a novel rich with the sights, sounds--and dangers--of Ecuador, and a compelling look at the provenance of one of mystery fiction's most dynamic heroines.

Review Quotes

"In a stunning portrait of a country just over the line between law and chaos, Blood Lake gives the reader urgent, pulse-pounding prose, an unstoppable, appealing narrator, and a sense that the veneer of civilization may be, in places, very thin indeed.
--S.J. Rozan, author of Ghost Hero

"The first page of Blood Lakeis strong, on a dead run; and the rest of the book ain't too dusty, neither."
--Harlan Ellison, winner of the Edgar, Hugo, Nebula, and Emmy Awards

"Wishnia's brand of gritty surrealism jolts the reader with startling images and jarring contrasts. [He] evokes a country and a culture vividly and unforgettably."
--Publishers Weekly

"Successfully serves up exotic atmosphere, complex family relations, social unrest, and dazzling characterization."
--Booklist

"Enormously engaging. It's as if Wishnia were attempting to rescue the thriller from the bloat and preposterousness of Ludlumization in order to return it to its more Graham Greene-like roots in a recognizably mean real world--just as Chandler and Hammett rescued detective fiction from drawing-room gentility and yanked it down to the mean streets that had always been its natural habitat."
--The Washington Post

About the Author

Kenneth Wishnia is an associate professor of English at Suffolk Community College and the author of the Filomena Buscarsela Mystery series--the first of which was nominated for both the Edgar and the Anthony Awards, and made the Booklist "Best First Mystery" list--and The Fifth Servant. He lives on Long Island. Liz Martinez is a member of the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. Her stories have appeared in the collections Cop Tales 2000, Manhattan Noir, and Queens Noir. She is the coeditor of Indian Country Noir and the author of many articles on security and law enforcement. She lives in New York City.