The Condor's Riddle

"...a vigorous, detailed, and delightfully quirky tale..."

- Kirkus Reviews

 

"Libraries will find The Condor’s Riddle a fine addition to literature and fiction holdings, highly recommendable to patrons who seek memorable stories, colorful characters, and uncommon, original plot progressions."

" - D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

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Magical realism meets the Cartels in an old Caribbean town. 

Who is the dead man lying in front of the convent in Santa Clara by the Sea? Was he already dead before he died in Santa Clara?  

Bebéi, a simpleminded French archivist with a photographic memory, must solve an ever-deepening mystery to calm the streets. For it appears the dead man held the key to vast sums of money he successfully laundered for the Cartels. And he has died at least twice before. The ruthless Venezuelans, in particular, will not buy his disappearing act a third time. 

Now his longtime girlfriend is in mortal peril. She goes into hiding under deep cover. As tension deepens between the Cartels, the local police, the Americans, and even the Chinese, who are quietly buying up large pieces of the ancient port city, the survival of an entire expat community is at stake. One by one, eccentric characters seeking refuge from their past lives elsewhere are snatched off the streets and squeezed hard to reveal their secrets. 

Only the most devoted sleuths of all, though, like Bebéi, have figured out that the deepest secret of all may involve the true location of the fabled gold city of El Dorado. Or maybe – just maybe – the existence of something even more extraordinary than that, which has been protected by Indigenous people for more than one thousand years.