The King's Lizard

It’s 1782 in New Mexico and slavers are plying their trade ruthlessly throughout the colony. Apaches and Comanches battle with Spanish militias to protect their homelands. Governor Anza, at his wits’ end, commandeers the help of Nando, a naïve but wily young half-breed, embedding him in his network of spies. Fast-paced and true to the realities of the time, The King’s Lizard catapults the reader into the fierce and demanding life of colonial Santa Fe.

It’s 1782 in New Mexico and slavers are operating ruthlessly throughout the colony. Apaches and Comanches battle with Spanish militias to protect their homelands. Governor Anza, at his wits’ end, commandeers the help of Nando, a naïve but wily young half-breed, embedding him in his network of spies. Fast-paced and true to the realities of the time, The King’s Lizard catapults the reader into the fierce and demanding life of colonial Santa Fe. Did you ever wish you could roam the American west in early days? See the land as it once was and experience life on a frontier that is gone forever? Pamela Christie, an award-winning author of the historic Southwest, has created a mystery series set in old Santa Fe when Spain has already occupied New Mexico for almost 200 years. In The King’s Lizard, the first of the Lizard Tales, the reader rides with Nando Aguilar, a young man with a light heart and a pleasingly competent hand. Lost between the culture of his Ute mother who is a slave, and his upper class Spanish father, Nando struggles to find himself, discovers love and gains stature as a member of Governor Anza’s spy network

Pamela Christie has lived and written in New Mexico since 1970. Her two historical mysteries derive in part from a decade of living in a remote Hispanic village in Northern New Mexico. She received her education at Bryn Mawr College, Pitzer College and the University of California at Berkeley. Life in New Mexico, whether teaching in a country school, or being a construction worker, or for many years a Realtor in Santa Fe, offered plenty of chances to explore the landscape she writes about, and to find evidence of the people who lived in the rugged kingdom centuries ago. Pam’s writing began in earnest in 2000 after a driving trip across the west and a chance encounter with a Navajo when her van broke down. In the year that followed she wrote The King’s Lizard, polishing it until its publication in 2004. In 2007, The King’s Lizard was awarded the New Mexico Press Women’s Zia Book Award for the best work of fiction written by a New Mexico woman over a three-year period. Dead Lizard’s Dance, a sequel, followed in 2009. Given today’s relentless push into technology, Pam enjoys the 18th century and the chance to ‘be here then.’ Local, hand-made and sustainable, Pam’s books are stories of the land she loves that come not only from rigorous research, but from the heart.