An Incidental Death at Monterey 12+

📖 Father Juan Ibarra is a Franciscan friar in California. He also happens to be a physician. He has been sent to the territory to bring some relief to the Native Californians who are suffering terribly from the imposed rule of the Spanish Empire, and particularly from introduced disease. Father Juan is asked to perform a “routine” autopsy on a young Indian woman.To his dismay, he discovers she was murdered. As he and Major Eduardo Carrillo, the commander of the Monterey Presidio, investigate the death, it develops the young woman was an unwilling concubine to the Governor of California. Further, she had recently been threatened with death by the governor’s wife.It turns out that sexual infidelity is not the governor's only failing. He has been dealing “under the table” with the captain of an American ship, and the dead woman served as a courier in financial dealings between him and the Americans, all to the detriment of the King's Treasury.An Incidental Death in Monterey follows Father Ibarra’s investigation from accidental drowning, to a murder with no suspects, to a murder with the governor as the prime suspect. Ultimately, it becomes a case of discovering, too late to prevent another tragedy, exactly what took place.