Maybe it was the chance for an easy $2500. Or maybe it was the chance to examine a treasure trove of Anasazi pots...or maybe it was just a slow day at his Old Town Albuquerque shop that prompted Hubie Schuze to be blindfolded and chauffeured to meet a reclusive collector looking for a confidential appraisal. Sure, it was an odd setup, but what could possibly go wrong? Hubie s devil-may-care attitude fades fast when he finds three of his own Anasazi copies among the genuine antiquities. Worse, when the driver drops him back home, what he doesn t find are the twenty-five crisp hundred dollar bills the collector gave him. Incensed at the rip-off, Hubie is determined to recoup his cash, but Detective Whit Fletcher interrupts, dragging Hubie to the morgue to identify a John Doe. When the sheet is pulled back, Hubie is stunned to see the collector. Hubie is not a suspect yet. But the longer he pursues his missing appraisal fee, the more tangled he becomes in the collector s shadowy life.
Review
Mike Orenduff's mysteries are intelligent, clever, and downright funny, with a spicy Old Town Albuquerque setting and plots as pungent and twisted as a chile ristra. I'm in love with Hubie Schuze--pot thief, shopkeeper, reluctant sleuth, and cook extraordinaire. A winning series! ----Susan Wittig Albert, author of the China Bayles mysteries
...fun, amusing mysteries that allow readers to enter into the world of art and philosophy, science and murder. Mystery nuts will love the twists and turns of Hubert s dilemmas and Orenduff s fast but intricate plots that weave in New Mexico culture. Buy a Pot Thief Murder Mystery, grab a margarita, and read up! --Mirage, the University of New Mexico Alumni Magazine
About the Author
Mike Orenduff grew up in a house so close to the Rio Grande that he could Frisbee a flour tortilla into Mexico from his back yard, a practice frowned upon by his mother. Like his protagonist, Hubert Schuze, Orenduff studied anthropology but never completed a degree in that subject. He did eventually receive a masters degree from the University of New Mexico and a doctorate in mathematical logic from Tulane. He has taught in New Mexico, Texas, Maine, New York, Wyoming, Bulgaria, Utah, Chile, Louisiana, Bermuda, and Georgia. He is married to his high school sweetheart, the noted art historian Lai Chew Orenduff, author of The Transformation of Catholic Religious Art in the Twentieth Century: Father Marie-Alain Couturier and the Church at Assy, France (The Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Wales).