The floor of a Colombian Jail is a dangerous place for an FBI forensic pathologist.
Fighting depression and alcoholism, the FBI agent must evoke all of his former training and expertise to help solve the crime. While working the case, his story intersects with Santos, the local police captain assigned to the case, who is indignant having been assigned to babysit a drunken gringo; Guasá, a notorious activist for indigenous rights who claims the cathedral’s land as her people’s; Cárdenas, the arrogant salt mine executive obsessed with keeping the mine operational; and Chamí, a shadowy anthropology professor with a secret double life. Mixing ancient history, contemporary political reality, and modern forensics, Cathedral of Salt weaves a gripping, fast-paced tale of murder and intrigue over the course of several days. What starts as a simple offer of collaboration with a crime scene investigation, becomes a quest for redemption for Grant who soon realizes that the salt wants to keep its secrets.
Cathedral of Salt is a mystery/thriller set in the exotic locale of Zipaquirá, Colombia. The protagonist, Sam Grant, is a downtrodden FBI forensics pathologist who finds himself caught up in the suspicious death of a priest within the Cathedral of Salt, one of Colombia’s true national treasures. The cathedral is a 10,000 square feet operational house of worship carved directly into a salt mountain where thousands of people worship each Catholic holiday.
The author is a professor of criminology who has lived and traveled throughout Latin America for the past 20 years. I have published over a dozen academic articles, encyclopedia entries, and book chapters in both English and Spanish, all of which have focused on crime and policing in Latin America or forensics. Even though Cathedral of Salt is a work of fiction, all of the places, people, and events in the novel are reality-based and will appeal to the mainstream reader. He can be contacted at tonytronic2000@yahoo.com.