Turtle Baby
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
In the third Bo Bradley mystery, a poisoned eight-month-old Maya baby boy living with paid caretakers on the American side of San Diego's Mexican border grabs Bo's heart and sends her into Tijuana, where she can legally investigate nothing, in search the little boy's mother.
When the mother, a successful singer from Guatemala, dies onstage in a Tijuana bar from the effects of a different poison, Bo finds herself snarled in a web of international intrigue. Drug addiction, the music scene, Mayan history and the always-maddening restrictions of Bo's job combine in a fascinating tale that will determine the future of an orphaned baby, and Bo herself.
"A powerful novel with complex characters, a sophisticated love story, evocative descriptions, and heart-stopping action." Minneapolis Star Tribune
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When poison from a tropical plant puts eight-month-old Acito, whose name means ``little turtle,'' into a San Diego hospital, child abuse investigator Bo Bradley is drawn into her third suspenseful case (following Strawgirl). According to Andy LaMarche, a hospital pediatrician and Bradley's determined suitor, Acito's caretakers could not have poisoned the baby accidentally. This casts suspicion on Acito's mother, Chac, a bar singer who visited her son just before he fell ill. Bo meets Chac in Tijuana and comes to believe she would not have poisoned her son, but this becomes tough to prove after the woman collapses and dies on stage. Since the San Diego police aren't acting on Acito's case and the Mexican cops don't care about the death of another ex-prostitute, Bo focuses her lively curiosity on Chac's acquaintances and her American husband, who has escaped from from a Louisiana prison. Padgett expertly crafts this mystery, putting her sleuth in the requisite life-threatening situations. What sets her story apart, however, is her description of the workings of public child protection and her convincing portrayal, from the inside, of Bo's efforts to work and live with manic depression.
