Daemon Waters: A Letty Valdez Mystery

By C.J. Shane

Chicana/Native American private investigator Letty Valdez is hired to look into the death an environmentalist who was studying desert springs when he was shot long-distance. Is his death a freak accident or was he intentionally murdered? An aggrieved wife wants Letty to find proof of her husband’s infidelities. At the same time, Letty receives an urgent appeal to find two missing Army veterans. Both are reported to be in Tucson, Letty’s hometown, in her latest adventure in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Daemon Waters.

Despite the disparate crimes she’s investigating, Letty finds tangled threads of deceit and violence that all lead back to each other. Her investigation becomes more urgent when a car bombing and an assassin’s bullet take out two men. Who is behind the crimes and what do they really want?

Letty, herself an Army medic veteran of the Iraq War, takes on these jobs while struggling to fend off her own PTSD nightmares that have bedeviled her for years after leaving military service. She’s also is thinking a lot about yet another vet, the one who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the one with the lop-sided grin that her dog found up in a tree. Letty is attracted to him, but at the same time, she is deeply concerned about keeping him safe from the assassin’s bullet. She is helped by her new investigator-trainee, Frankie Miranda who is especially clever at solving crimes using a computer, as well as her family and friends, plus her two dog pals, Millie and Teddy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.J. Shane
• Release date: Aug 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780999387481

C.J. Shane

C.J. Shane is an Arizona writer and visual artist. She has worked as a journalist, academic reference librarian, ESL teacher, and freelance writer. She exhibits her artwork nationally and internationally. She is the author of eight nonfiction books and numerous magazine and newspaper articles. She is the author of the Letty Valdez private investigator series: Desert Jade (2017), Dragon's Revenge (2018), Daemon Waters (2019) and Direct Evidence (2022).  A second mystery series, the Cat Miranda Mysteries, includes Kissed (2020), Fair Play (2021) and The Broken Pot (2022). Desert Jade, Dragon's Revenge, and Kissed were all Finalists for Best Mystery-Suspense, New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. Shane's mystery books often have a romantic subplot.