Death of the Last Villista: A Texana Jones Mystery (Texana Jones Mysteries) - Hardcover

Martin, Allana

3.98

51 ratings by Goodreads

9780312265731: Death of the Last Villista: A Texana Jones Mystery (Texana Jones Mysteries)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312265735 ISBN 13: 9780312265731

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2001

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In 1961, a Hollywood movie company came to tiny Polvo, Texas, to film a movie about Pancho Villa. However, the film was dogged with trouble: a man was found murdered on an island in the middle of the Rio Grande and the case was never solved.

Now, forty years later, trading post owner Texana Jones is hosting a video crew making a special celebrating the film's anniversary. Most of the townspeople are excited by this event, but some want nothing to do with the project. On the day the townspeople gather to meet the actors, the RV belonging to actor Dane Anthony catches fire and explodes. Is it an accident or arson? And who is the mysterious river watcher in the camouflage suit?

While Texana's veterinarian husband Clay fights to save several abandoned horses, Texana searches in the past for a key to the present danger. She makes some startling discoveries about her own family and about the conflicting presence of the movie people forty years earlier. But, when a local child goes missing, Texana relies on a freelance reporter to help her discover who is behind the threats and whether or not the death of the Villista is connected to present day events. As the past and present converge, Texana slowly begins to uncover a motive for all the evil, but has she done it in time to prevent further tragedy?

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About the Author:

Allana Martin is a former journalism teacher and lives in Lipan, Texas. Her first novel, Death of a Healing Woman, won the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award.

From Publishers Weekly:

The best parts of Martin's fifth Texana Jones mystery (after 2000's Death of a Myth Maker) are the lyrical descriptions of the setting, the gritty Texas border country along the Pecos River. When a travel writer dismisses her own town of Polvo as "a hot, dreary little place full of barking cur dogs," Texana, who runs a trading post, agrees but adds, "On a clear day the sky above is pale turquoise, the dust motes turn the harsh sunlight golden, and the shadows of mesquite leaves dance in the wind." More of this kind of strong, thoughtful writing might have helped energize Martin's plot and characterization, both of which tend to flop like limp tortillas. Forty years earlier, a Hollywood film crew came to Polvo to make a movie about Pancho Villa. A project adviser, who as a boy had served with Villa, was found murdered on an island between Texas and Mexico, and the crime was never solved. Now a television crew has come to town to do a documentary, and everybody connected to the film becomes both a suspect and a possible victim of a vindictive assailant who emerges from the mists of the past to blow up motor homes and generally cause trouble. Texana was a child extra in the film and now finds a link between her late mother and the murdered Villista. Central to the story's resolution are Texana and her husband, Clay, the local vet. Most readers will have left by then, perhaps headed for Polvo to sample the scenery.

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