Fire Dancer

Money, murder and inheritance fill the air in Fire Dancer by Susan Slater. Ben Pecos and his fiancee Julie Conlin are invited by a friend to stay at her palatial home in New Mexico.

Connie CdeBaca is the head of a family of successful land developers, but she harbors a deep secret she has never told anyone. She is also terminally ill with leukemia and has made arrangements for her estate that will profoundly impact her three step children. There is no love loss between the adult children and Connie, but because of an error in a survey a hundred years ago, the land she is trying to develop should really be part of the Sandia Pueblo.  She wants to give the land back to them instead of developing it into mega-homes.

Naturally this does not go over well with the step children. Greedy, angry and willing to do anything to stop Connie, they plot to gain control.

Meanwhile in his job as a psychologist at the Indian Health

Services in Albuquerque, Ben has been treating a person with gender identity issues. Em is a young Indian, born male, but trying to identify as a female. His identify issues arose after he was given up for adoption as a baby and raised by a Mormon couple. His adopted mother let him cross dress but his adoptive father was against it. With both of them dead, he from illness and she being murdered, he sets out to find his Indian roots.

When a murder takes place, we learn some of the secrets being hidden. Fire Dancer is a suspenseful, exciting mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end.