My Bad — Manuel Ramos

Ex-con Gus Corral is fresh out of jail and intent on keeping his nose clean. He's living in his sister's basement, which he shares with a cat or two, Corrine's CDs and their father's record collection. The blues music in particular strikes a chord, matching the way he feels about his current state.

Things start to look up when Gus gets a job working as an investigator for his attorney, Luis Montez. An activist in the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Montez is slowing down and getting close to retirement, and he figures the felon can do the legwork on his cases. When Maria Contreras comes to see the lawyer about her dead husband's "business partner" someone she has never heard of who's demanding his share of the profits of a business she knew nothing about Montez has Gus look into the situation.


Narrating the story in alternating chapters, Gus and Luis recount their run-ins with suspicious characters as they learn that there's more to the case than meets the eye. The widow's husband owned and operated a local bar, not Aztlan Treasures, a Mexican folk art import company. And word on the street is that he was murdered on his boat in the Sea of Cortez. Soon, the dead bodies are piling up and the pair is surrounded by shadowy figures that point to money laundering, drug smuggling and even Mexican crime cartels.

The follow-up to Desperado, Ramos' first novel featuring Gus Corral, My Bad races to a walloping conclusion in a Rocky Mountain blizzard, leaving fans of crime novels and Chicano literature eagerly awaiting the next installment in his mile-high noir.