The Underground Man, by John Lantigua

"The Underground Man," by John Lantigua, in Ellery Queen Mystery magazine, November. December 2019.

This is the second time I have selected a story by John Lantigua.  Like the first it is about Miami private eye Willie Cuesta.

In this story a lawyer friend asks WIllie to help a client who is an expert on tunneling.  He helped break political prisoners out of incarceration in Uruguay but for the last twenty years he has been doing legit construction work in the U.S. 

Alas, someone blabbed about his past to the wrong people and now some some professional jewel thieves insist he help them tunnel into a jewelry store.  He doesn't want to do it, and even if he did, he thinks they will leave him underground permanently, so to speak.

Turn them in?  Not so easy.  Because the tunneler is in the country illegally.  Quite a dilemma.

Willie comes up with a  stratagem which turns, oddly enough, on the professionalism of the bad guys.  A clever story.

The Jaguar at Sunset, by John Lantigua

"The Jaguar at Sunset," by John Lantigua, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2016.

A nice private eye story by Mr. Lantigua. 

A Brazilian couple named the Mattos led the fight against development in their region and are murdered for it.  Now their daughter Constancia has taken up the cause and is supposed to make a speech in the Everglades National Park in Florida.

The bad guys would like to her silence her too but they know that a political assassination in the United States would cause more trouble than it would end.  But they can give a plane ticket to Constanzia's bitter former lover, and set him loose in Florida.  A lover's quarrel ending in tragedy is no cause for an international incident.  Did I mention he is an expert marksman with a rifle and a bow and arrow?

Connie's new lover contacts Mimi P.I. Willie Cuesta, and Willie, trying to provide bodyguard service on a shoestring, gathers some unlikely allies...

A good tale with a strong sense of place.