Was it a spectre from the past, some Aztec revenant that had inspired the “Black Widow†to kill her husband? Or did these chilling murders have more to do with the rights of property and inheritance, and mere greed? In Lucha Corpi’s third installment in the Gloria Damasco Mystery series, Black Widow’s Wardrobe, the intrigue is high, the questions are many and the answers lie in the sleuthing skills of one woman. Who better than Gloria Damasco, that indomitable detective with a flair for clairvoyance, to unravel this intricate and pulsing plot, which winds its way from an exotic Day of the Dead celebration in San Francisco to the even more exotic sites and customs of Tepoztlán, an Indian village high in the mountains above Cuernavaca? Gloria soon finds herself in an uncanny struggle to rescue the soul of Licia, the Black Widow, who believes herself possessed by the spirit of La Malinche, the eternally condemned slayer of her mixed-blood offspring during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Part thriller, part exploration of myth and history, Black Widow’s Wardrobe is a page-turner. For Corpi, art has always meant activism. As a woman, a Hispanic, an immigrant and a mother, she has always found herself breaking down barriers in both life and literature. She is the author of Eulogy for a Brown Angel, winner of a 1992 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and the critically-acclaimed second installment to the series, Cactus Blood. Corpi holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from UC-Berkeley and an M.A. in World and Comparative Literature from San Francisco State University. Since 1977 she has been a tenured teacher in the Oakland Public Schools Neighborhood Centers Programs.