Marcos Villatoro's first book in the Romilia series, Home Killings, was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001. Blood Daughters, the fourth in a series, picks up where A Venom Beneath the Skin left off. FBI agent Romilia Chacón has been through a lot--the loss of her sister, the loss of her lover and the loss of a partner's trust--so she drinks and smokes and apologizes for none of it.
A young woman is brutally mutilated and murdered on the California-Mexico border, and Chacón wants nothing to do with it until an old friend asks for help. So begins a rapid, well-written thriller whose heroine makes it worthwhile. Without Chacón, a Salvadoran-American, this would be a stereotypical whodunnit. With her, it's a cultural study of Mexican cops versus American law. It's an investigation of the child sex trade through the eyes of an angry, honest woman who will stop at nothing to beat the crap out of a murderer. Sound brutal? It is brutal--just like Chacón, whose crime scene observations rival Sherlock Holmes.
Blood Daughters is entertaining and well-written, with a vivacious heroine at the helm and action that doesn't stop. Villatoro has created a truly original lawwoman in Romilia Chacón; let's hope she's around for many books to come. --Sara Dobie, blogger at Wordpress