A tough-guy travel agent loses an heiress while on a drug-fueled vacation
Reid Rance can’t take his eyes off May Gibson. It’s not her figure or her face that’s got him mesmerized though. It’s the emerald on her finger and the checkbook in her hand. She looks like money, and he’ll do anything to get it—anything short of taking her daughter on a Mexican vacation. Reid is a very special kind of travel agent who makes a living taking soft men on dangerous trips. Leslie Gibson is the savviest teenager in town, and she’s intent on getting her kicks south of the border. May hires Rance to babysit her, but he’s the one who’ll need taking care of.
Leslie is desperate to sample all that Mexico has to offer, from sun-soaked beaches to the drug-crazed underworld. When she’s kidnapped by a cartel, Rance must find her quick—or he’ll never escape Mexico alive.
Ellery Queen was a pen name created and shared by two cousins, Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–1971), as well as the name of their most famous detective. Born in Brooklyn, they spent forty-two years writing, editing, and anthologizing under the name, gaining a reputation as the foremost American authors of the Golden Age “fair play” mystery. Although eventually famous on television and radio, Queen’s first appearance came in 1928, when the cousins won a mystery-writing contest with the book that would eventually be published as The Roman Hat Mystery. Their character was an amateur detective who uses his spare time to assist his police inspector uncle in solving baffling crimes. Besides writing the Queen novels, Dannay and Lee cofounded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, one of the most influential crime publications of all time. Although Dannay outlived his cousin by nine years, he retired Queen upon Lee’s death.