In the weeks before the 1979 Mexican elections, San Diego P.I. Alvaro Hickey follows newspaper accounts of the stories Baja California campesinos are spreading about visits from the Holy Virgin. She's admonishing them to vote the corrupt and tyrannical PRI out of power. Though Alvaro doubts her divinity, he's firmly on her side. He harbors deep personal and political antipathy to the PRI, even before Lourdes Shuler comes asking him to unite her with her sister Lupe, whom she claims is the campesinos' Virgin.He's not the kind to turn down an appeal for help, especially from a beauty he senses might fill a missing part of him. Besides, the published sketch a savant girl drew of the Virgin looks identical to Lourdes. He imagines she might not have a sister. Then, on their way to dinner, they pick up a tail. Lourdes admits the man could've been sent by her brother Andres, an advisor to the Mexican president, to retrieve the fortune in gold she stole from her dead father. She claims their father was a German Nazi, and that her sister murdered him. Alvaro chooses to stand with the lady while realizing she might become his last adventure. And as yet, even while they travel the back roads and trails of Baja, he doesn't know about the infamous comandante of the Mexican federal police who has come from the Capital to rid the land of this Virgin, who may be the lady at Alvaro's side.

"In Kuhlken's engaging fifth novel featuring the eccentric Hickey family (after 2006's The Do-Re-Mi), San Diego PI Alvaro Hickey investigates potential corruption in the 1979 Mexican election. On the eve of the election, Hickey is contacted by the young and beautiful Lourdes Shuler, who hopes Hickey can locate her missing twin sister, Lupe. Hickey learns that Lupe is believed by the poor throughout Baja California to be the Holy Virgin come to earth to cause uproar before the elections. Lourdes also tells Hickey that she believes that Lupe killed their father, a right-wing German migr with powerful connections to the Mexican government. Soon it becomes a race against time as Hickey and Lourdes head to Mexico to find Lupe before the federales can. Kuhlken easily blends adventure with a classic PI staple: the appearance of an alluring woman, full of secrets. Fans of the Hickey clan will undoubtedly enjoy this south-of-the-border installment." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Ken Kuhlken's stories have appeared in Esquire and numerous other magazines and anthologies, been honorably mentioned in Best American Short Stories and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His novels are Midheaven (finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first fiction book, 1980), and the Hickey family mysteries The Loud Adios (St. Martin's/PWA Press Best First PI Novel, 1989), The Venus Deal, The Angel Gang, The Do-Re-Mi (Shamus Award finalist), and The Vagabond Virgins (February 2008). The author lives in La Mesa, CA