I don’t read much crime fiction so I’ll probably not read Juan Hernandez Luna’s work but it sounds like he was a good writer. The Latin American Herald Tribune has the full obit.

Hernandez Luna, born in Mexico City on Aug. 19, 1962, was an “outstanding author of the noir genre,” the INBA communique said, noting that his books have been translated into French and Italian.

He won a number of awards, including the National Book of Short Stories prize in 1988, the Latin American Short Story prize in 1992, the National Science Fiction prize in 1995, and the Dashiell Hammett prize in 1997 and 2007 for the detective novels “Tabaco para el Puma” (Tobacco for the Puma) and “Cadaver de Ciudad” (City Corpse).

His published works include the biographies “Se Llamaba Emiliano” (He Was Called Emiliano) on the life of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata – written under the pen name Ivan Degollado – and “No Hay Virtud en el Servilismo” (There’s No Virtue in Servility) about the ideologue Ricardo Flores Magon.

Among his best-known novels are “Unico Territorio” (The Only Territory), “Naufragio” (Shipwreck), “Quizas Otros Labios” (Perhaps Other Lips), “Tijuana Dream”, “Yodo” (Iodine) and “Las Mentiras de la Luz” (Lies of the Light).