My triad of Mallorcan mystery novellas, Dancing on Broken Glass, was selected as a finalist for the 2019 Eludia Award, given by Hidden River Arts. The winner of the award will be published; my collection will look for another path into the world.
Tomás Mateo des Fonoll Vilalta is an unlikely detective who writes ghazals, plays the tabla, and cooks specialties unique to his Mallorcan home. Three mysteries take Vilalta from one end of the island to the other. The second two feature as well the detective's archaeologist partner Gritta Becker, who refuses to suffer fools gladly and can't forgive the Romans for having wiped out Carthage.
In Dancing on Broken Glass, the Basque gardener at a fledgling international retreat center on a hillside of restored windmills is found on the pool terrace with his throat cut, and the owner's sister Abigail Laurent is accused of his death, once the Basque Separatists have been ruled out and Abigail's treacherous suitor who leads the famous choir at the Sanctuary of Lluc.
In Whole Cloth, the young Algerian assistant at the weaving mill of Gritta's friend Serena Bâ has disappeared, leaving behind her treasured family heirlooms and a mysterious passport—belonging to someone looking just like Araby, but with a lion tattoo in blue calligraphy on her neck. When a body turns up on the beach, Vilalta must disentangle the matter of identity to make sense of a young woman's violent death.
In Ungodly Romans, Gritta is reluctantly spending the summer teaching high school students at a field school for Roman archaeology in a medieval walled town across the island. She becomes the prime suspect when her nemesis, the arrogant daughter of a hot-shot consultant for L.A.'s Getty Museum, is murdered in the ancient theatre where a very modern drama of love and jealousy plays itself out.
image: Christie B. Cochrell, Ruins, Mallorca 2013
