Please Excuse My Badge: A Guest Post from Author Isabella Maldonado

We welcome Isabella Maldonado, author of the new Phoenix Burning (the second book in the Veranda Cruz Mystery Series), to Midnight Ink's blog today! Here she shares some of the quirks that remain after retiring from the force.

As a retired police officer with over two decades in uniform, transitioning into civilian life has been…challenging at times. It seems that being a cop requires certain behaviors and skills that don’t transition well. Here are a few examples:

• Driving fast–Full disclosure: I love to drive fast. I've also had the training to be able to do it. Getting to a dentist appointment, however, is not considered a valid reason for doing so. This fact has led to some tickets. Had to learn how to slow wayyyy down. Now I drive at a sedate pace most of the time. Safer, but not as much fun.
• Taking charge–When I retired, my rank was Captain. I had been in some sort of supervisory role for over ten years. Before that, even as a patrol cop, people looked to me to handle the situation when I arrived at a scene. After all, that's why people call the police, right? Well, when you're a regular person—and a woman to boot—such behavior can earn you the title "pushy broad." I've had to learn to bite my tongue and let situations play themselves out rather than offer suggestions.
• Investigating–Police are taught to ask a lot of questions. We dig for information from witnesses, suspects, victims, and even passersby. This is good police work. But when your well-honed cop curiosity comes out in regular life, it's called "being nosy." I had to shut that down immediately upon leaving the force.
• Gallows humor–I don't think this will ever go away. After getting a few hard looks, I've learned to keep the jokes to myself. Kind of a shame. Some of that stuff is hilarious.
• Jumping when the phone rings–Years of being on call 24/7 have conditioned me with the Pavlovian response to snatch the phone every time it buzzes. In the shower. On the toilet. In the bathtub. Pushing my cart down the aisle at the supermarket. Yeah, I need a 12-step program for this one.
• Constant vigilance–Cops incessantly plan for worst case scenarios and imminent attack. This keeps them alive while on the job, but has a weird effect when grocery shopping. A friend of mine (also a retired cop) once dropped into a crouch and reached for his gun when a small child's balloon popped at a play park. Turns out he wasn't wearing his duty weapon–because he was no longer on duty–so he ended up patting his empty waist band. I think he would have cleared leather if he'd been wearing a sidearm.

So the trick is to have a positive outlook and to forgive yourself for certain lapses. Fortunately, I'm blessed with wonderful friends and a supportive family who truly get me, quirks and all. It's a package deal.

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The battle between Veranda Cruz and the Villalobos cartel turns Phoenix into a war zone

Homicide Detective Veranda Cruz will stop at nothing to take down the Villalobos cartel. But when a wave of violence in the city escalates, she fears that the secrets of her past will take her down instead.

Adolfo Villalobos is a crime boss who's determined to stake his claim. To prove that he's ready to run his family's sprawling criminal empire, he devises a plan to silence his siblings and destroy Veranda, leaving a trail of destruction through downtown Phoenix that makes national headlines. Veranda believes the task force she's been assigned to lead will end the cartel's reign of terror, until Adolfo's revenge takes a cruel—and highly personal—twist.


Praise for the Veranda Cruz Mystery series:
"...[A] tightly plotted police procedural."
—Publishers Weekly on Phoenix Burning (Starred Review)

"A highly entertaining police procedural . . . Hang on tight for the ride of a lifetime across Southern Arizona as Maldonado rises to her written challenge to entertain, enthrall and engage readers in this high octane thriller."
—Suspense Magazine

"Maldonado's a writer to watch, and she showcases her own extensive law enforcement background in this tightly plotted police procedural."
—Publishers Weekly on Blood's Echo (starred review)

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Isabella Maldonado retired from law enforcement as a Commander of Special Investigations and Forensics. During her long career, she was recognized with a Meritorious Service Award and a Lifesaving Award, and she was selected to attend executive management training at the FBI's National Academy. Isabella is the immediate past president of the Phoenix chapter of Sisters In Crime. She lives in Mesa, Arizona. You can visit her at www.IsabellaMaldonado.com.

Guest Blog Post: James Scarantino on THE PRICE OF VENGEANCE

We welcome James Scarantino, author of the new Price of Vengeance (the third book in the Denise Aragon Mystery Series), to Midnight Ink's blog today! Here he shares some insight into his latest book.

Creating her own messes is nothing new for Detective Denise Aragon. Her mouth has always been a problem. This time it sets off a chain of events that make her the target of an FBI investigation into kidnapping and terrorism.

All the while she's on her back in a hospital bed, terrified she may never walk again.

The circumstances in The Price of Vengeance open a new side for the stiff-necked Aragon. Her vulnerability, her sense of responsibility for the consequences of her loose words, and her need to depend completely on others snap the steel bands she has wrapped around her heart. As readers know, she has added muscle to her body like armor. Now none of it can help her. Only friends, a returned lover, her detective partner and a Sergeant with his own agenda can help her out of the pit she has dug for herself.

In previous books I have explored the limits of acceptance of the losers in the criminal justice system. I've always wondered how a family who has lost someone to murder can stand again to be victimized by the system that is supposed to give them justice. Denise Aragon, with her buzz cut and muscles, grew out of this tension. Walter Fager in books 1 (The Drum Within) and 2 (Compromised), a criminal defense lawyer who delivered injustice for the right price, faced it when his wife was murdered and her killer went free (thanks to Aragon's blunder).

In The Price of Vengeance Pete Cervantes can no longer take it. He blames the loss of his family on the grand schemes of powerful men. A speech by Senator Sam Baca Valles sets him off, and he sets his sights on this self-centered politician. Careless words by Aragon strike a match to the fuse.

I like the trap Cervantes sets for the Senator. Without spoiling the story, let me just say that I wonder about those people in Congress with their expensive suits and haircuts, flying first class while soldiers returning from war pass them on their way back to cramped economy seats. What are they made of? They send men and women off to die in strange countries for stupid reasons. They pass laws that result in lives lost here in the USA. How would they act when they had to live in the same world as the people whose destinies they shape and control? Would any of them measure up?

Would they risk their careers and power, their own lives, for others?

The sweet thing about Cervantes's trap is Valles has no way out. Either he's through or he's dead.

This story unfolds in the pricey neighborhoods of tony Santa Fe, whereas previous cases had taken Aragon to the gritty side of town where she grew up. Those books painted the division between the brown and white sections of Santa Fe pretty starkly. This book has the hostage situation sited in one of Santa Fe's loftiest neighborhoods, but where, as Detective Rich Lewis observes in the one profound thought Aragon allows him per day, the dust on cars is the same dust on the hoods of pickups in the city's trailer parks.

The interior mystery around which the hostage situation is wrapped centers on the Sandia Mountain Wilderness high above Albuquerque and just about two miles above sea level. I know those mountains well; I used to hike and run them end to end on my birthday, with a cold six pack and steak dinner waiting at the end. The distance comes to the equivalent of running a marathon, but at over 10,000 feet, over rocks and boulders and in places in temperature approaching one hundred degrees. A couple times it was so hot I thought I would die near the end.

Hey! There's an idea for a mystery: a crazy wilderness runner dies on the mountain. Was it accidental, caused by over-exertion, dehydration, heat stroke, or was it…murder?

In conducting the research that provides the answers for Aragon, I got to learn much about what EMTs do and shouldn't do, toxicology, and what happens to the human body when pushed beyond its limits.

Pushing one's body beyond its natural limits fit right in with Denise Aragon's character. She would understand and be fascinated. And, as luck had it, just like me, she had run the same mountain trails where the body was found.

I'm glad this story presented some opportunities for humor. Aragon in The Drum Within let her sense of humor tame her anger against her incompetent and corrupt supervisor. In this book she has some irreverent fun with the FBI agent who wants to nail her for Pete Cervantes' actions.

Even with Aragon paralyzed for a chunk of the story, she's still an action figure. As with all the bumps in the road of her life, each jolt just makes her stronger.

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There Is Always a Price to Pay

Detective Denise Aragon finds herself in the middle of a desperate standoff she may have caused with a single phrase: take him out. On one side is Peter Cervantes, her grieving friend and now a hostage-taker who blames the deaths of his sons on the grand schemes of powerful politicians. On the other side is a United States senator with a dark past whose family is being held at gunpoint by Cervantes.

The FBI targets Aragon as an accomplice to kidnapping and terrorism, and her only way out is to drag the senator's crimes into the light. She can only pray that the price of vengeance won't be paid in blood.



Praise for Compromised:
"Mayhem and more."—Kirkus Reviews

"[Scarantino] is skilled with complex plotting and has a talent for expository dialogue...Though she is fictional, Aragon, who sports a crewcut and a baby face, is an intelligent, hard-boiled heroine of whom Santa Fe can be proud."
—Santa Fe New Mexican

Praise for The Drum Within:
"The Drum Within is a superb novel, and this is a hearty welcome to an insanely talented newcomer, Jim Scarantino."
—Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author

"The Drum Within is a gritty police procedural that will make you rethink everything you know about justice. A tour de force of good guys and bad guys. A masterpiece. I loved it."
—Robert Dugoni, #1 Amazon and New York Times bestselling author

"The Drum Within keeps many ducks in a row through a maze of gritty encounters, bitter confrontations, and some very clever red herrings."
—Santa Fe New Mexican

"A thrilling police story."—Suspense Magazine

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James Scarantino is a prosecutor, defense attorney, investigative reporter, and award-winning author. His novel Cooney County was named best mystery/crime novel in the Southwest Writers Workshop International Writing Competition.