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THE LAST CLIENT OF LUIS MONTEZ by Manuel Ramos

THE LAST CLIENT OF LUIS MONTEZ

By

Pub Date: March 14th, 1996
Publisher: St. Martin's

It's a great day for Denver attorney Luis Montez when his well-connected client Jimmy Esch, charged with cocaine possession, walks on a technicality--arresting officer Thomas Strayhorn changes his account of the bust on the stand--and Luis, still recovering from his secretary/lover Evangelina's defection, lets Jimmy's sister Lisa talk him into bed. But the next day is not so good, with Strayhorn killed in an accident, Jimmy stabbed to death, Lisa vanished, and the cops, who figure that Luis suborned Strayhorn's perjury on the stand and is now covering his tracks after Jimmy panicked, looking for Luis with warrants for homicide and kidnapping. Naturally, Luis does just what any standup guy would do in his situation: jumps bail, wrestles a gun from the trucker who offers him a ride out of town, steals said truck, and takes it on the lam to San Diego and an unrevealing conversation with Strayhorn's partner, bad cop Ben Martinez. But if Martinez isn't after Jimmy's share of the Esch family fortune, and Luis, despite what the cops think, isn't either, then who is? More urgently, how do the crimes Luis is unjustly accused of compare to the ones he's actually committed? Ramos trades the intensity of Luis's first two cases (The Ballad of Gato Guerrero, 1994, etc.) for nonstop, pleasantly incredible action.