Gavilan, A Novel

Middle-aged Evan Landry is murdered in his Santa Fe mercantile. His twenty-something ''coyote'' son, Jesse, shoots and kills the murderer in self-defense, but the sheriff thinks otherwise. Fleeing the city, Jesse links up with sympathetic friends and holes up with his father's wealthy business partner, Don Nerio de Noriega, in Albuquerque. His friend, Lieutenant Harold Beckner, in the Territory of New Mexico on a secret mission from the War Department, follows. Beckner and the Army are searching for an illicit arms cache, which they had traced to Albuquerque. The smuggled arms, intended for an insurrection, are discovered, as are the plotters. Are they connected to the murder and will they meet their fate? Is Jesse cleared? And what is a Texas Ranger doing in Albuquerque?

Richard M. Lienau, with a background in electronics and computer technology, holds more than twenty U.S. Patents. He has written several novels, including Night Run, The Maltho-Rose Plot, Holy Ghost, The Truchas Light, and Legacy of the Light, the last three from Sunstone Press, along with a number of screen plays, short stories and articles. He lives in San Miguel County, New Mexico.