Genre:
Mystery, Literary Fiction, Satire
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Bio
Katayoun Medhat is a medical anthropologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Her first novel The Quality of Mercy, Milagro Mystery #1, was inspired by PhD fieldwork in the Southwest U.S. and the Navajo Nation and won the 2016 Leapfrog Fiction Award. In Lacandon Dreams, Milagro Mystery #2, unlikely lawman Franz Kafka (aka K) and maverick Navajo cop Robbie Begay continue their fateful collaboration. Katayoun lives in the south of England where she channels her yearning for wide Southwestern skies into writing the next Milagro Mystery.
Books
Title: Flyover Country
Publisher: Leapfrog Press/2022
Genre: Mystery
The Mesa, eyrie of the ancient Pueblan ancestors casts its shadow over small-town Milagro, where old-time ranchers and thrusting incomers converge in a common cause: profiteering from the land. Charged with mediating a seemingly innocuous dispute about a slain miniature horse, K is caught in the titanic, merciless clash between Old and New West. To make matters worse Robbie Begay may be turning from friend to foe commodifying sacred traditions for the benefit of cultural tourism. As his heroes morph into villains and his villains stay villains, K’s customary position between rock and hard place suddenly becomes much more precarious.
Available for Sale
Title: Lacandon Dreams
Publisher: Leapfrog Press/2019
Genre: Mystery
Milagro, boom and bust town, between mesas and desert badlands, is ruled by good ol’ boys high on guns and shale oil. Franz Kafka is caught in a dystopian nightmare where Big Energy is fêted for fracking the life out of the county, a teenage girl’s mysterious vanishing is callously ignored, all the Sheriff’s men are out training schoolteachers to shoot, and the mighty melting pot is a witches’ cauldron of intercultural discontent. Navajo cop and soul-brother Robbie Begay’s anarchic investigation methods and virtual track-reading skills lead where K’s principles won’t let him go, while an old Lacandon woman’s dreams play havoc with K’s certainties and open doors to another world.
Available for Sale
Indiebound
Amazon
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Title: The Quality of Mercy
Publisher: Leapfrog Press/2017
Genre: Mystery
Officer Franz Kafka’s small town routine is disrupted by a mysterious death in the border-country badlands. The murder investigation leads K and Navajo Nation officer Robbie Begay on a journey through the Navajo Reservation and into the long shadows cast by history. Along the way, constitutionally subversive K and pragmatic opportunist Begay do their best to obstruct each other’s investigative progress. As the murder is solved more tragedy looms.
Available for Sale
Indiebound
Amazon
Barnes & Noble