Mark Wheaton – författare

Following his ordination as a priest, Father Luis Chavez returns to the mean streets of his youth, hoping to put his past behind him. But the brutal murder of a worker in Ventura County’s vast farm fields compels Luis to return to his criminal roots in order to unravel a massive conspiracy. Teaming up with Michael Story, an ambitious Los Angeles deputy DA, Chavez goes undercover as a farm laborer to bring down an immense human-trafficking ring tied to one of California’s most prominent and powerful families.

Fighting to stay on the path of the righteous while confronting evil at every turn, Father Chavez finds himself in a battle of good versus evil, with the souls of hundreds hanging in the balance.

When a priest is brutally gunned down in front of St. Jerome’s Chinese-American Catholic Church, Father Luis Chavez is asked by the archdiocese to lead an inquiry. With the confessed killer already in custody, it looks like an open-and-shut case. That is, until Father Chavez digs deeper.

As the killer’s confession unravels, Father Chavez teams up with Deputy District Attorney Michael Story to get to the bottom of it. Together, they discover a conspiracy leading back to one of the world’s oldest criminal organizations.

But just as the team is about to break the case, a mysterious virus sweeps through Los Angeles, sending the city into a spiral of panic—and Father Chavez into the heart of a mystery that could rock the City of Angels to its core.

Not a day goes by that Father Luis Chavez isn’t haunted by the cold-blooded slaying of his brother, Nicolas. But as the years pass and the case remains unsolved, there looks to be no end to his torment.

When Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Story discovers a possible link between a murdered prosecutor and Nicolas’s death several years before, the priest investigates, uncovering an international money-laundering scheme tying American banks to Mexican cartels. Finding himself the target of a brutal cartel hit squad, Father Chavez heads to Mexico, where he unearths a long-buried secret that pushes his faith to the breaking point.

As he fights to stop a seemingly endless cycle of killing, Father Chavez closes in on his brother’s murderer, learning that sometimes the most incipient evil is found closest to home.