Devil's Kitchen¿Southwest noir ¿ crime and romance in the Sonoran Desert¿ where the sacred feminine traditions conflict with the masculine logic of profit and environmental exploitation. When a severed head shows up at a Tucson landfill, Pima County Sheriff¿s Detective Manny Aguilar gets the case. He handily tracks down the dead man¿s heroin-addicted friends, and Manny thinks he¿s identified the killers¿until someone starts killing them. Suddenly Manny finds himself in the middle of a hellish conspiracy between a Mexican drug lord and an Arizona land developer. Aguilar¿s redheaded, butt-kicking girlfriend, Reina, along with his Yaqui grandmother help solve the mystery, but it¿s Johnny Oaks, a Cherokee PI, who rides with Manny to the showdown in Arizona's remote Skeleton Canyon.