City of Stone — Richard Benke

Richard Benke, author of The Ghost Ocean, returns to southern New Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border for an action-packed mystery involving a lost cache of gold that has trapped guilty and innocent alike in a web of intrigue and murder for nearly a century.

The gold, dangled as incentive in a scheme to capture Pancho Villa after his 1916 border raid, was to be assigned to the care of a young lieutenant, George Patton, but the bullion never arrived. The sons of a slain British agent, whose body was found in a Mexican river bottom, suspect the gold was connected with his death. One by one, they are also caught in the tangle of deceit.

The border, with its illegal traffic in drugs, cattle, and immigration, proves more than a match for them and for a unique cast of characters, north and south.