Even compared to Mississippi and Connecticut, Albuquerque, New Mexico is by far the most infuriatingly difficult city name to spell in the United States of America – no wonder they often opt for just ABQ. Apparently the 556,000 people from Albuquerque are known as “Burqueño” or “Burqueña” and “Albuquerqueans” – something I did not know till I started reading crime novels set in Albuquerque.
Asking around, and hunting up a few Albuquerquean contacts, they all recommended New Mexico Native American author Ramona Emerson’s Shutter (2023) – and they were right to. The novel features Navajo Rita Todacheene, a forensic photographer working for the Albuquerque police force. But Rita has been hiding a secret: she sees the ghosts of crime victims and those ghosts won’t let her sleep. When Rita is sent to photograph the scene of a supposed suicide on a highway overpass, the ghost of the victim latches onto Rita forcing her on a quest for revenge. It’s a seriously different crime novel that is both beautifully written and (that most over used phrase, but here applicable) a page turner.
Rita Todacheene returns in Exposure (2024), this time in Gallup, New Mexico, where violent crime is five times the national average and a serial killer is at large targeting indigent Native people whose murders are easily disguised as death by exposure on the frigid winter streets.
Tower Lowe is a New Mexico based author and writer of the mystery novel Albuquerque, Abandoned (2016). Leon tried to rescue a baby abandoned in a dumpster in Albuquerque but his brother, Booth, is killed before he has a chance to get the baby. Two detectives with (this may be a regular feature of Albuquerqueans crime fiction?) some spiritual insights, Cinnamon and Burro, investigate the case and use their visions to search for the baby. Lowe has also written several other mystery novels set in various New Mexico locations.
Native American life is a big part of New Mexico crime fiction. Carol Potenza’s Hearts of the Missing (2018) starts with members of the Fire-Sky tribe disappearing with a trace. Pueblo Police Sergeant Nicky Matthews is assigned to the case and has to hunt a killer connected to dozens of missing tribe members. Potenza taught biochemistry at New Mexico State University before becoming a full time writer. Hearts of the Missing won the Tony Hillerman Prize winner and is the first book in the Nicky Matthews mystery series followed by The Third Warrior (2021), and then Spirit Daughters (2022), all set within the Fire-Sky police department.
Rudolfo Anaya’s Albuquerque: A Novel (2006) was a winner of PEN Center West’s Award for Fiction. Abran Gonzalez is a homeboy from the barrio, a young boxer whose world is shattered forever the night he is summoned to his mother’s deathbed. He learns he is the son of an unknown Mexican man – a man he is desperately compelled to find. His quest will bring him in contact with many unpleasant characters.
Anaya is also the author of the Sonny Baca series of novels set in and around Albuquerque, with Baca struggling in the footsteps of his legendary lawman grandfather as a small-time private investigator. In Zia Summer (1995) Sonny Baca seeks out the truth about his cousin’s bizarre murder. Then in Rio Grande Fall (2006) dead bodies are falling from the sky at the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta de Albuquerque (which, by the way, is a real thing and takes place every October). In Shaman Winter (1999) Sonny is hired to find the mayor’s daughter – kidnapped the night she stars in a Christmas pageant. And finally, in Jemez Spring (2005) the governor of New Mexico is found drowned in the Bath House and Sonny is called in to investigate. I also love that all Anaya’s books are published by the University of New Mexico press – great to see a uni press getting into crime fiction.
The Hot Air Balloon Fiesta de Albuquerque festival also features in JP Hudson’s A Senior’s Moment: A Balloon Murder in New Mexico (2009). Bodies pile up as balloons disappear.
The Woman Who Knew Too Much (2011) is the first book in Bett Reece Johnson’s Cordelia Morgan “Woman who…” series set in the New Mexico outback and featuring Cordelia Morgan. Others in the series take Morgan across New Mexico and also to Colorado.
And then there’s the Neil Hamel Mysteries from Judith Van Gieson. The series features Albuquerque attorney and sleuth Neil Hamel and her Latino lover. there’s about nine books in the series.
Sandi Ault’s Wild Indigo (2019) is set in the high desert of New Mexico as Bureau of Land Management Agent (for non-Americans the agency within the US Department of the Interior responsible for administering US federal lands) Jamaica Wild witnesses a Tanoah Pueblo man being trampled to death by stampeding buffalo. Wild Indigo is the first in a series of five books featuring the BLM agent Jamaica Wild and all set in New Mexico.
And finally, how could we write about Albuquerque and New Mexico without mentioning the late, great Tony Hillerman. Hillerman moved around New Mexico and settled in Albuquerque in 1966, where he earned a master’s degree from the University of New Mexico where he later taught till 1987. His 18 books in his Navajo series were internationally massive – at one point he was New Mexico’s 22nd-wealthiest man!! Hillerman wrote a bunch of detective novels but is perhaps best known for his mystery novels featuring the Navajo Nation Police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee (and there’s been a TV series too). Joe Leaphorn first appeared in 1970 in The Blessing Way. A decade later in 1980 Leaphorn was joined by Jim Chee in People of Darkness. Then the two finally began working together in the seventh novel Skinwalkers (1986). The novels have sold well all over the world, in particular in France apparently. And New Mexico loves Hillerman too – the Tony Hillerman Library was dedicated in Albuquerque in 2008 and a school in his name in 2009.
