Agent Lopez

Riding Fence - Coming to Kindle

Montana ranch kid, eight years a military policeman, Border Patrol agent at the Bisbee station since 2002.

Twenty-one years in, Agent Bill Lopez rides the Naco segment of the border on horseback, with Jefe under him and a great deal of quiet. Then the graves start turning up on his stretch of the line, and somebody has to keep riding it.

Coming to Kindle → Meet the Characters

Meet Agent Lopez

His theme

Lopez’s Theme

Riding Fence

20 chapters - September 2023 to March 2024

“Back home we called it riding fence. Somebody has to do it.” His own account, first person, in his own voice: the horse, the line, and the graves on his stretch of it.

About Riding Fence

At a glance

Genre: Sonoran Gothic: first-person border horror-noir novella
Themes: Duty and partnership; the border as a job and a burden; what a man files and what he keeps
Tone: Patient, procedural and plainspoken, the quiet of a long ride with something wrong under it.
Tropes: lawman, horse and rider, slow-burn mystery, graves in the desert, the hunter’s side
Heat level: Implied only.
Where to start: Yes. It’s Lopez’s own account, September 2023 to March 2024, and reads on its own.
Length: 20 chapters, 23,869 words.
Content note: A procedural exploration of duty, partnership, and the border. Contains references to the deaths of migrants and trafficked children, unmarked graves, and supernatural violence. Mature themes, restrained depiction.