City Different

A brand new life begins for Eddie Collins with the discovery of a body in a bedroom of his California home. Eddie, the youthful head of a successful Internet company, recognizes the dead man; it's his Chief Financial Officer, lying on the floor with a bullet hole in his chest. Complicating things is the disappearance of Eddie's wife, Nina. The police see her as the victim's lover and the logical suspect as his killer. To them it adds up: she fled the scene after the murder, and her current whereabouts is unknown. To Eddie, none of it makes sense. But for now, all that matters is finding Nina.

Nina's birthplace, the City Different of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is where she always goes when life becomes too much for her. If she can be found anywhere, Eddie realizes, that's where it will be. He takes off after her.

Unwittingly, his search for Nina embroils him in Santa Fe's modern dilemma - its old southwest charm giving way to the real estate developers and outsiders with too much money. It takes him to the art galleries of Canyon Road, where he finds a surprising connection to Nina's former life, and to a sleepy Indian Pueblo that is at the center of a land grant dispute between the pueblo and the real estate developers. In the process, Eddie becomes a suspect in a second murder.

Eddie's search for his wife turns into something he could never have imagined, and finding her leads to something he never wanted to know.

Stephen Hazlett was born and came of age in New Jersey. He served in the Army Medical Corps, including a year in Vietnam, after which he began a career as a computer professional in California's Silicon Valley.

He currently lives an author's life in New Mexico's Land of Enchantment.