Set Up: Secrets and Lies in Zihuatanejo by Ana Manwaring

QUINCY, Ill. - Feb. 16, 2022 - PRLog -- Between the smell of ripening marijuana and the semi-automatic rifle pointed at her head, JadeAnne Stone questions her decision to drive to Mexico in a VW camper with only Pepper, her German Shepherd, for protection. JadeAnne doesn't fit anywhere–not with her adoptive, wealthy but dysfunctional, family, not with her new position as managing partner at Waterstreet Investigations, and especially not with her lover, Dex Trouette, now slipping away. Finding a missing banker's wife is the key to distinguishing herself as an investigator and making her life fit like her favorite jeans. But life never cooperates.

Kidnapped off a lonely highway en route to Ixtapa, JadeAnne unwittingly enters a world of high-stakes oil politics, money laundering, and narco-trafficking. She is forced to drive to the Aguirre hacienda where she finds the missing wife. But she's been set up, and to stay alive she must unravel the Aguirre family's secrets. Who will she trust as loyalties shift and greed rules? And how will she escape this new underworld?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ana Manwaring is a former newspaper lifestyle columnist. Her poetry, personal narratives, book reviews and short stories have appeared in diverse publications including the California Quarterly, KRCB Radio, Morning Haiku, Mystery Readers Journal, Stolen Light Ed. Fran Claggett, and Sisters Born, Sisters Found Ed. Laura McHale Holland.

A graduate of the University of Denver (B.A.) in Education and English Lit and Sonoma State University (M.A.) in Education/Linguistics, Ana teaches creative writing in California's wine country, produces the monthly FUNdaMentalists poetry event on Zoom and operates her editing company, JAM Manuscript Consulting—"Spread Excellence." In her "past life," she has owned and operated BookWork, an accounting and tax preparation service, managed a social service non-profit organization serving immigrants, and cared for the elderly, all of which she gave up to work for a PI, consult brujos, and out-run gun totin' maniacs on lonely Mexican highways—the inspiration for, the JadeAnne Stone Mexico Adventures. Read about her experiences in Mexico: www.saintsandskeletons.com.

After earning her M.A., Ana finally answered her mother's question, "What are you planning to do with that expensive education?" Be a paperback writer.

To purchase a copy of Set Up, please visit the Indies United website at https://www.indiesunited.net/set-up