Colorado Authors Hall of Fame
The Los Angeles Times observed that “he is known as a crime writer,
but that doesn’t quite capture what he does. His books are
love stories, political dramas, mordant cautionary tales."
Luis Montez Mystery Series
Ballad of Rocky Ruiz
In 1986, Manuel Ramos – a burned-out Chicano attorney working at Legal Aid – entered a writing contest sponsored by Westword, Denver’s alternative newspaper. His story, White Devils and Cockroaches. won second place and featured Luis Montez – a burned-out Chicano lawyer – as the protagonist.
In 1993, Manuel created a larger platform for Luis Montez. Montez roamed Denver’s Northside as the protagonist in Manuel’s first novel The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz. The novel won the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from the University of California and a Colorado Book Award. The book also was a finalist for an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
This debut novel in the acclaimed five-novel Luis Montez series introduced a hero unique in detective fiction: Luis Montez, a world-weary middle-aged Latino lawyer steeped in the politics, history, and culture of the golden age of Chicano activism.
First published by St. Martin’s Press as both a hardback and paperback, The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz was reissued by Northwestern University Press in 2004. In 2023, thirty years after it's initial release, The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz is in its fourth edition, published by Arte Público Press, a division of the University of Houston.
Ballad of Gato Guerrero
"But the next time I'm down in Guadalajara I'll make it a point to tell them that a Chicano up in Denver has embraced a traditional genre and transformed it into a separate and distinct voice, and has done it with virtuosity. Manuel Ramos has grabbed the baton and is running with it. The transformation is more than positive. Once in a while, that's the way things happen up here in El Norte." From the Preface by Alfredo Véa, Jr.
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The Last Client of Luis Montez
"The road not taken, the danger evaded, the easy, agreeable, decorous life--these are not for Luis, or for his readers. If this is your first introduction to the work of Manuel Ramos, you are in for a wonderful ride. Hang on tight." From the Preface by Marianne Wesson.
Blues for the Buffalo
Winner of 3rd Annual Latino Books Into Movies Award - Starred review from Publishers Weekly.
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"For beneath the malls and the parking lots rimmed with mock orange trees, beneath the subdivisions and golf courses of the American Southwest, there is an arid desert waiting to reemerge. This desert has its own stories and its own people who once knew how to live upon it. They live there still, and in Manuel Ramos they have found a crime writer who knows the territory and can navigate through it at top speed with conviction, wit, and even some of the wild energy of the Brown Buffalo himself." From the Preface by John Straley.
Brown-on-Brown
Luis Móntez returns in this story set against the Great Sand Dunes of Colorado and a hundred years water war. Along the way, Luis meets Alicia, the bartender with the heart of gold, and her own secret past. And then there's Emilio, a vicious hired killer with a warped sense of humor. Just another few days in the life of the lawyer Publisher's Weekly said had "hangdog charisma."