The publication of his novel The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz (1993) launched Manuel Ramos's literary career as a major writer and contributor to the Chicano/Latino mystery genre. His mystery novels, beginning with The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz and including The Ballad of Gato Guerrero (1994), The Last Client of Luis Montez (1996), and Blues for the Buffalo (1997), all feature the same protagonist, Luis Montez, a lawyer disillusioned over the path his life has taken since the days of the Chicano Movement of the 1970s.

Ramos's literary success was influenced by the University of California at Irvine Chicano/Latino Literary Contest award he received in 1991. In 1986 Ramos received second prize in the Westword Fiction Contest for "White Devils and Cockroaches," a short story. In 1993 he was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America in the category of best first novel. In 1994 Ramos won the Colorado...