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The Author

Award-winning author Mike Orenduff grew up in a house so close to the Rio Grande he could Frisbee a tortilla into Mexico from his back yard, a practice frowned upon by his mother.  Like his protagonist, Hubert Schuze, Orenduff studied anthropology but never completed a degree in that subject.  He did eventually receive a masters degree from the University of New Mexico and a doctorate in mathematical logic from Tulane.  While a college professor, he published a number of works with such scintillating titles as A Partially Truth-Functional Modal Calculus and Are Modal Contexts Referentially Opaque?

In 1993, Orenduff’s second short, Slivi, was published in the Sandy River Review.  His first story was the grand prize winner in a short-story contest he entered in high school, but he believes he has now tracked down and destroyed all copies of that work.  He wrote a regular column for the Bermuda Sun for three years while serving as president of Bermuda College.

In addition to murder mysteries, Orenduff also writes for the stage.  His Play, The Christmas Visitor, won first prize in this year's Jewel Box Playwriting Contest and has garnered prizes in two other playwriting contests in addition to being selected as one of the “Top 100” by Writer’s Digest in 2008.

Orenduff is married to the noted art historian Lai Chew Orenduff, author of The Transformation of Catholic Religious Art in the Twentieth Century: Father Marie-Alain Couturier and the Church at Assy, France (The Edwin Mellen Press, New York and Wales).


The Thief

Hubert Schuze is a treasure hunter.  He only became a thief when Congress redefined treasure hunting as thievery, and - as Hubie likes to say - who knows more about thievery than Congress?  He's a pleasant fellow who enjoys the ironies of life and the company of his nephew Tristan, his drinking buddy and sometimes partner in crime Susannah Inchaustigui, his friend Martin Seepu, his neighbor Miss Gladys Claiborne, and Father Groaz, the priest at San Felipe de Neri.  Hubie doesn't count his lawyer Layton Kent and Detective Whit Fletcher of the Albuquerque Police Department as part of his inner circle, but they are both good people to know given his penchant for becoming a murder suspect.