Death Of The Last Villista - Softcover

Martin, Allana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0373264348 ISBN 13: 9780373264346

Publisher: Worldwide Library, 2002

Synopsis

When a video crew set to film an anniversary special commemorating a movie about the life of Pancho Villa disrupts the town of Polvo, Texas, and stirs up old memories about the original filming, which was marred by an unsolved murder, violence and terror ensues, forcing Texana Jones to find the truth. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Allana Martin is a former journalism teacher and lives in Lipan, Texas. Her first novel, Death of a Healing Woman, won the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award.

From Publishers Weekly

The best parts of Martin's fifth Texana Jones mystery (after 2000's Death of a Myth Maker) are the lyrical descriptions of the setting, the gritty Texas border country along the Pecos River. When a travel writer dismisses her own town of Polvo as "a hot, dreary little place full of barking cur dogs," Texana, who runs a trading post, agrees but adds, "On a clear day the sky above is pale turquoise, the dust motes turn the harsh sunlight golden, and the shadows of mesquite leaves dance in the wind." More of this kind of strong, thoughtful writing might have helped energize Martin's plot and characterization, both of which tend to flop like limp tortillas. Forty years earlier, a Hollywood film crew came to Polvo to make a movie about Pancho Villa. A project adviser, who as a boy had served with Villa, was found murdered on an island between Texas and Mexico, and the crime was never solved. Now a television crew has come to town to do a documentary, and everybody connected to the film becomes both a suspect and a possible victim of a vindictive assailant who emerges from the mists of the past to blow up motor homes and generally cause trouble. Texana was a child extra in the film and now finds a link between her late mother and the murdered Villista. Central to the story's resolution are Texana and her husband, Clay, the local vet. Most readers will have left by then, perhaps headed for Polvo to sample the scenery.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Worldwide Library
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0373264348
• ISBN 13: 9780373264346
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 256