” ‘Good and evil are not always separate,’ said Arriaga. ‘They are often together. They are part of us – present, changing, unequal.’ ”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (FEB 05, 2011)

In his fourth Charlie Hood thriller, three-time Edgar winner Parker continues to mine the violent drug and arms trafficking over the Mexico/California border. Hood, 32, an L.A. Sheriff’s Department officer, has been on loan to the ATF for 15 months, assigned to drug operations in this “often infernal, often violent, often beautiful desert.” It’s a place Hood has come to love – and fear.

This time out the central plot concerns an undercover ATF agent, Sean Ozburn, who seems to have gone berserk. Early one morning, while his team (which includes Hood) is monitoring a trio of cartel-affiliated teen killers in a rented safe house, owned by the ATF, the cameras suddenly go dark and all three boys die in a hail of bullets.

There isn’t much doubt about who did it. For one thing, Ozburn was briefly caught on camera disabling the feed right before the murders. Ozburn also took one of their guns – a newly designed machine pistol called Love 32 (fans will remember this lethal beauty from Iron River) and they suspect he’s on his way to the next cartel-rented safe-house full of young killers.

The subplot concerns a character fans will also remember, Bradley Jones, a charming little psychopath who is now an LA sheriff’s deputy and a cash courier for a Mexican cartel. On his first day at work he manages to bust out a kidnap victim (the son of a U.S. cartel connection), killing most of the kidnappers (from a rival cartel) in the process.

Point of view switches among Hood, Ozburn, his wife Seliah, and Jones as the plots hurtle towards a violent dovetailing. Seliah Ozburn cooperates with Hood’s team, sharing her email password so they can monitor her husband’s increasingly erratic – and erotic – emails. Of course she also sets up a simple code with Sean so she can still communicate privately.

Eventually Hood’s team will realize that something has happened to Sean and the symptoms are showing up in his wife too. A toxin perhaps, or a virus, that makes them aggressive, highly sexual and averse to water. As the prologue concerns a priest in a bat cave, readers will have their suspicions. And Seliah tells Hood that the symptoms began on their vacation to Costa Rica when they became friendly with a priest.

Meanwhile Bradley Jones is playing a dangerous game, juggling his two lives and his several clever schemes. As always there’s plenty of action and gore and a hint of mysticism (not necessarily benign). The world of the drug cartels grows, if possible, even more evil and sadistic, while a solution seems ever more hopeless.

Parker’s fans will be well satisfied, but newcomers should start at the beginning. The stories stand on their own well enough, but the characters – including the cartel boss – develop with each book, and it’s helpful to have the background.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 44 readers
PUBLISHER:	Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (January 11, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	T. Jefferson Parker
EXTRAS:	MostlyFiction.com interview with T. Jefferson Parker (2009)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: L.A. Outlaws The Renegades Iron River From the Merci Rayborn series: Red Light Black Water Stand-alone mysteries: Silent Joe Cold Pursuit California Girl

Bibliography:

• Laguna Heat (1985)
• Little Saigon (1988)
• Pacific Beat (1991)
• Summer of Fear (1993)
• The Triggerman’s Dance (1996)
• Where Serpents Lie (1998)
• Silent Joe (2001)
• Cold Pursuit (2003)
• California Girl (2004)
• The Fallen (2006)
• Storm Runners (2007)

Merci Rayborn series:

• The Blue Hour (1999)
• Red Light (2000)
• Black Water (2002)

Sheriff Charlie Hood series:

• L.A. Outlaws (2008)
• The Renegades (2009)
• Iron River (2010)
• The Border Lords (2011)
• The Jaguar (2012)
• The Famous and the Dead (April 2013)

“One of the dead was a teenaged boy named Gustavo Armenta, who was on a date that night, and as Hood carried another box into the house, he pictured the way Gustavo had led his girlfriend by the hand from the restaurant patio and how a few moments later an errant bullet had found his heart in the darkness fifty yards away, stopping eighteen years of past and sixty years of future dead and forever. The other dead man was a gun dealer with a revoked license.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (APR 17, 2010)

In LA Sheriff’s Deputy Charlie Hood’s third adventure, set in the California desert border town of Buenavista, Hood joins an ATF operation to stem gunrunning to Mexico. When an ATF weapons-buy ends in the accidental death of a cartel leader’s son, the bad guys take revenge, abducting and torturing the agent responsible. Naturally a rescue is in the offing.

Meanwhile, the scion of a bankrupt local gun maker, Ron Pace, finds a way to get the family business going again by selling an ingenious untraceable gun – his design – to the cartels. Bradley Jones, son of bandit Allison Murrietta (from Hood’s debut in L.A Outlaw) brokers the deal even as he enters training for the LA Sheriff’s Department Explorers.

Point of view switches quickly among various characters. All but Pace, the talented gun designer-turned-illegal arms dealer, are known to Hood, mostly in a friendly way.

The action is fast and furious but there’s time for a budding romance for Hood and a 3-day wedding for Bradley Jones. Political tension simmers as the two governments bristle at border raids and Parker shows how intractable and complicated the situation is in reality – on both sides of the border.

Parker’s prose is upbeat, even jaunty, but a dark, persistent thread runs through his stories. The characters are all likeable except for out and out villains, such as cartel leaders. But Pace is an engaging, lovesick young man and Jones is full of life and fun.

There’s a whiff of the mythical and mystical in these Hood novels too, stemming originally from the legacy of the outlaw Joaquin Murrietta, and now increased with the introduction of a new character, Mike Finnegan. Finnegan, hit by a car at the beginning of the book, spends most of it encased in bandages in a hospital bed, but that doesn’t keep him from knowing more than he should about Hood’s business. Finnegan and his enigmatic daughter feel like characters readers will be seeing more of in the future.

The plot background is well fleshed out from various angles – the cartels, the Mexican police and soldiers, American drug demand, US gun politics and more. But while it sometimes seems hopeless, it never feels preachy. This is a quirky, desert-steeped series that should appeal to fans of character-driven, politically themed thrillers.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 71 readers
PUBLISHER:	Dutton Adult; First Ediition (January 5, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	T. Jefferson Parker
EXTRAS:	Excerpt MostlyFiction.com interview with T. Jefferson Parker (2009)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: L.A. Outlaws The Renegades The Border Lords From the Merci Rayborn series: Red Light Black Water Stand-alone mysteries: Silent Joe Cold Pursuit California Girl

Bibliography:

• Laguna Heat (1985)
• Little Saigon (1988)
• Pacific Beat (1991)
• Summer of Fear (1993)
• The Triggerman’s Dance (1996)
• Where Serpents Lie (1998)
• Silent Joe (2001)
• Cold Pursuit ( 2003)
• California Girl (2004)
• The Fallen (2006)
• Storm Runners (2007)

Merci Rayborn series:

• The Blue Hour (1999)
• Red Light (2000)
• Black Water (2002)

Sheriff Charlie Hood series:

• L.A. Outlaws (2008)
• The Renegades (2009)
• Iron River (2010)
• The Border Lords (2011)
• The Jaguar (2012)
• The Famous and the Dead (April 2013)