THE WAY TO SANTIAGO

A fast-driven, maturely manipulated, political thriller plus. The plus is (a) the setting, the current chaos that is Mexico today, with a leftist government challenged by capitalistic oil interests, by Nazi inroads, by conflicts of violence, illiteracy, race and creeds at odds; (b) plus also is the more rounded portraiture than one expects, intelligently differentiated fools and scoundrels. Europe is at war -- a Fascist coup is imminent as arms are exchanged for Mexican oil. A wolf in sheep's clothing in the person of a fanatic follower of Hitler, posing as a foreign correspondent, heads the organization, and it takes another foreign correspondent, an American, to ferret out the facts. There's a tense, murderous trip through the jungles to the oil base, but Lamson comes through. Intelligently done, fast, adept, convincingly grounded in Mexico of today. Good reading, though some will think it tough.