Murder at the Cat: a Bismark Pacheco Mystery

Bismark Pacheco, descended from the Bri Bri Indians, and trained as a guerilla fighter in the Nicaraguan civil war by operatives of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, goes to work for the Costa Rican Ministry of Justice after graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point. Pacheco soon becomes the premier crime detective in the land. Pachecos fame is so great, and his reputation so secure that he is hailed as a national hero by campesinos throughout the hills and valleys of the troubled but striving country. Inspector Pacheco is called to investigate a murder at the Center for Tropical Agriculture (The CAT) on the Atlantic slope of Costa Rica where he finds an international web of intrigue that tests the limits of his skills. The trail leads through a baseball factory, into the green hills and high meadows of a dormant tropical volcano, through the luxuriant vegetation of a valley where tropical fruits and nuts abound, where sugarcane, bananas, coffee, and cocoa grow the year round, and where exotic and colorful birds are distracted by the nectar of ever present gardenia, bougainvillea, and orchid. In this idyllic setting, where Toucan-Grackle fights top the disturbance list, eight more violent deaths are recorded as Pachecos investigation proceeds, and Pacheco himself is threatened. Pacheco contemplates the comfort of frontier justice when he weighs his knowledge of the Costa Rican court system against the depth of the villainy he uncovers.