Palimpsest — Armand Croft

When Dr. Andrew MacCrimmon surprises his wife, Karen, in bed with her personal trainer, he takes a long drive to clear his head. In the desert outside of Lone Pine, he is mugged and left to die. Bob Seibel, a bar owner, rescues him, and, in return, MacCrimmon tends bar for Bob while he and his wife go on vacation. Señora Lena Montoya, the runaway wife of a Tijuana drug lord, meets MacCrimmon in the bar and over the next weeks falls in love with him. Her husband finds out, and has MacCrimmon taken to Tijuana to be tortured and killed. He and Señora Montoya--who has been badly beaten by her husband--escape. Back in San Francisco Dr. MacCrimmon interrogates Karen's trainer and finds that, as happens so often in life, the situation was not at all what it seemed.