43 MISSING is based on the true events of September 2014,when 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College went missing in Iguala, Guerrero and have yet to be found.

Given the choice between resigning from the squadroom in Acapulco or taking a new assignment, Detective Emilia Cruz finds herself on a national task force examining Mexico’s most notorious crime.

After 18 months and three inconclusive investigations, the task force is the Mexican government’s last attempt to discover what happened to 43 students who disappeared after being seized by police in a small southern city.

Comprised of cops from across Mexico, the task force lacks technical tools, organized case files, and reliable witnesses. It’s a perfect scenario for failure.

Despite its problems, the task force gives Emilia the opportunity to search for the rapist and murderer known as El Acólito, with whom she has an agonizing family tie. Digging into his past life in Mexico City, she’ll learn a shocking truth about the man she’s determined to kill.

As the task force digs up confusing new leads, a diplomat from the United States embassy offers Emilia $50,000 to end the investigation. It’s a tempting offer that would shift Emilia’s hunt for El Acólito into high gear.

But is the diplomat really who he claims to be?

Does it matter?

When the task force heads to the scene of the crime, Emilia knows her loyalty, conscience, and very future will be put to the test.

About the Author

With a CIA career in her rearview mirror, Carmen Amato is the author of the Detective Emilia Cruz police procedural series set in Acapulco and optioned for television by a US network studio. Emilia Cruz is the first female detective on the Acapulco police force, confronting Mexico’s drug cartels, legendary government corruption and culture of machismo. Kirkus Reviews has called the books “consistently exciting,” with “danger and betrayal never more than a page away.”

Carmen’s books reflect her travels around the world, as well as her expertise in international negotiations and intelligence collection, translation, and analysis. She is a recipient of both the National Intelligence Award and the Career Intelligence Medal.

Originally from upstate New York, Carmen was educated there as well as in Virginia and Paris, France. Her family tree includes a mayor, a Mensa genius, and the first homicide in the state of Connecticut with an automatic weapon. The perpetrator, her great-grandfather, eluded a state-wide manhunt after killing two people–one of whom was his wife. He was never brought to justice. *

Visit Carmen’s website at http://carmenamato.net to get a free copy of the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library. With two novellas, the first chapters of the first 3 novels in the series. 

*From Amazon