My second novel is on sale.
It’s has been a long journey, and I enjoyed writing it.
The Dead Sea Bar and Grill is about tough guys with tender hearts who get involved in an elaborate con involving oil at the height of the 1977 oil embargo.
If you want to laugh, cry and root for the underdog, the Dead Sea Bar and Grill is a book you’ll enjoy reading.
Thank you,
Raul Hernandez
“Don’t consider this a visit. Look at it as a business opportunity. I’ve got a job offer for you.” — Butch Badovich
(Excerpt from the novel)
Synopsis
It is 1977.
Oil is in short supply, disco is in full bloom, and the New York Yankees are on the verge of winning the World Series after a long drought.
Never mind all that.
Butch Badovich is a pint-size pimp who has a stable of women nobody wants. They are too fat, too old or too ugly. So Butch gives credit to shut-ins and other losers who are on fixed incomes so they can get serviced by his third-rate escort business.
Butch has his office in a booth at the Dead Sea Bar and Grill in New York City where his girlfriend Rosie keeps the books. The bar is a dive where con men and an assortment of thieves, robbers, street toughs and oddball characters congregate.
The pimp business is thriving but soon Butch’s customers miss payments or thumb their noses at paying. The escort service is soon being crushed by debt.
Rosie suggests that Butch hire an aging former heavyweight boxer Frankie Finch as a collector and enforcer.
Frankie is living in the dank basement of New Jerusalem Church of God’s Wondrous Signs and Marvelous Miracles, and working for a religious con man named Erasmus Jenkins who sold life insurance before got into the business of saving souls for Jesus.
Frankie is the church’s janitor where life is very bleak.
Just when he is about to pull the trigger, Butch comes into the basement and offers Frankie a job as his collector and enforcer.
Frankie goes to work for Butch and learns about Butch’s dream: make enough money and move to Arizona to get out of the New York City cold and open a fruit stand.
Butch bets all his pimp business savings at the racetrack on a horse that is a very long shot. The horse wins; Butch collects tens of thousands of dollars.
Mob accountant Vincent Primello is fresh out of prison and needs a lot of cash to set up an elaborate con to rip off Arab and other oil barons out of a million dollars.
Primello convinces Butch to finance his race track winnings on the
scam but Primello must agree to let Butch and Frankie help him with an elaborate con involving oil.
Stepping on the Devil’s Tail published last year is available on Amazon and Kindle
A Mystery Thriller
By Raul Hernandez
PREFACE
Jack Fuentes, a burned-out newspaper reporter, stumbles into a diabolical plot just when he’s about to hand in his resignation and put newsrooms in the rearview mirror of his life.
His girlfriend Emily has left him and his close relationship with his father is crumbling.
The newsroom’s loose cannon packed up his belongings and plans to head to the West Coast. He wants to put as much distance as possible between him and his personal demons, deadlines and demanding editors.
With not enough money to leave El Paso, Jack bets city editor and fellow pool hustler, C.J. Cortez, a thousand dollars that he can get quotes from Mickey Madrid for the drug kingpin’s obituary. Mickey is in the hospital close to death from a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.
C.J. thinks Jack’s wager is insane, but he sees the bet as easy money. C.J. knows Mickey hates reporters and all his grieving relatives are also at the hospital, including his beautiful daughter Sierra. She can’t stand Jack because of the stories he has written about her father whose clandestine drug-smuggling routes the DEA can’t locate and shut down.
Late at night, Jack weasels his way into Mickey’s hospital room. He gets the quotes, beats a late-night deadline, and Mickey dies that night.
The next day when he is about to hand in his resignation, everything changes. Jack is surprised by what else is on the recorder. What Mickey Madrid’s 
feeble lips revealed.
When Jack starts asking questions about who will take over Mickey’s prized narcotics pipeline, he finds himself staring into the throat of an unsuspecting monster — an unholy trinity of drug cartels, criminal street gangs and jihadists.
The search for answers leads to an old artist’s studio in a small Mexican town with Sierra who is searching for her brother’s killer.
Soon, Jack and Sierra are running for their lives.
When Jack starts asking questions about who will take over Mickey’s prized narcotics pipeline, he finds himself staring into the throat of an unsuspecting monster — an unholy trinity of drug cartels, criminal street gangs and jihadists.
The search for answers leads to an old artist’s studio in a small Mexican town with Sierra who is searching for her brother’s killer.
Soon, Jack and Sierra are running for their lives.