An Incidental Death at Monterey: (2 Mission Murders)

Father Juan Ibarra is a Franciscan friar in California. He also happens to be a physician. He has been sent to the territory to bring some relief to the Native Californians who are suffering terribly from the imposed rule of the Spanish Empire, and particularly from introduced disease. Father Juan is asked to perform a "routine" autopsy on a young Indian woman. To his dismay, he discovers she was murdered. As he and Major Eduardo Carrillo, the commander of the Monterey Presidio, investigate the death, it develops the young woman was an unwilling concubine to the Governor of California. Further, she had recently been threatened with death by the governor's wife. It turns out that sexual infidelity is not the governor's only failing. He has been dealing "under the table" with the captain of an American ship, and the dead woman served as a courier in financial dealings between him and the Americans, all to the detriment of the King's Treasury. An Incidental Death in Monterey follows Father Ibarra's investigation from accidental drowning, to a murder with no suspects, to a murder with the governor as the prime suspect. Ultimately, it becomes a case of discovering, too late to prevent another tragedy, exactly what took place.

About the Author :
John O'Hagan is an historian who specializes in the Spanish and Mexican eras of California. Although he currently resides in Boise, Idaho, he grew up on the central California Coast and very early on developed a life-long love affair with the era of Los Californios. A member of the California Missions Foundation, as well as the Idaho State Historical Society, he has presented papers at several annual meetings of the California Missions Study Association. He has lectured extensively on the California missions and led tours of them. He made a presentation on the native Californians and the Franciscan missions at the Museum of the California Indians in Sacramento CA. For five years, he was a participant in a Roads Scholar program on Religion and the Settling of the West. In this program, he delivered a series of lectures on the California missions, their art, architecture, and important role in American history. John has published two non-fiction histories: Lands Never Trodden; The Franciscans and the California Missions and When the Basques ruled California. While researching these books he was struck by the violence, intrigue and passion which suffuses the history of Spanish/Mexican California. Given that he decided to write a series of mysteries, each one set in a different one of the California missions, and each one based on documented historical facts. The first of this series, A Convenient Death at San Diego, was published in 2015. An Incidental Death in Monterey is the second of what should be 21 "mission mysteries."