Making a thriller

The character of Mark Sands came out of my own experience as a stockbroker at the St. Paul branch of Paine Webber in the nineties, but my time in the business was much smoother than his, although he made more money than I did. This is from the back cover: “An investment advisor falls 27 floors to his death in St. Paul. An auxiliary bishop is strangled in Houston. An art gallery owner dies in Santa Fe in the middle of the night.” It turns out that Mark’s problem is his family name. Certain people in México know more about it than he does. Again, a quote from the cover: “The only link between these victims is an obscure painter living underground in México, pulling the levers of a plan of revenge that goes back to the 1530s. Homicide detective Ken Abrams and mystery writer Rebecca Stuart unite to root out a plot so fiendish it could only have originated in The Devil’s Workshop. Beware what paintings you hang on your walls.” It’s a compelling story of revenge over generations, as it turns out. Art plays a role, as it does in most of my mysteries. It begins on the next page.