“[A] dirt-filled noir debut . . . the stark Southwestern setting might hold you over if you’re still suffering from Breaking Bad withdrawal.” —Esquire
Winner of the Tony Hillerman Prize
Winner of the Spur Award for Best Western Contemporary Novel
Finalist for the Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel
Finalist for the Edgar Award for Best First Novel
Rodeo Grace Garnet lives with his old dog in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as El Hoyo. He doesn’t get many visitors in The Hole, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many undocumented immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border in Rodeo’s harsh and deadly “backyard,” but a member of a major Southwestern Native American tribe, whose death is part of a mysterious rompecabeza—a classic crime puzzler—that includes multiple murders, cold-blooded betrayals, and low-down scheming, with Rodeo caught in the middle.
Retired from the rodeo circuit and scraping by on piecework as a bounty hunter, warrant server, and divorce snoop, Rodeo doesn’t have much choice but to say yes when offered an unusual case. An elderly Native American woman from his own Reservation has hired him to help discover who murdered her grandson, but she seems strangely uninterested in the results. Her attitude seems heartless, but as Rodeo pursues interrelated cases, he learns that the old woman’s indifference is nothing compared to true hatred, and aligned against a variety of creative and cruel foes, the hard-pressed PI is about to discover just how far hate can go.

CB McKenzie