Pérez-Reverte at his best is a matchless entertainer. But this, his weakest novel, is a major disappointment.
The perilous arc of a powerful woman druglord’s career, painstakingly traced by the Spanish author of such brainteasing thrillers as The Club Dumas (1998) and The Seville Communion (1999).
Pérez-Reverte’s sixth is a dual narrative in which we observe Mexicana Teresa Mendoza’s rise to power after the death of her drug-running pilot boyfriend Güero Davila, and also receive summaries of her progress from an unnamed journalist who’s interviewing both her former criminal contacts and law enforcement officers who spent 12 years pursuing her. It all moves much too slowly, because Pérez-Reverte’s obviously thorough researches betray him into an almost encyclopedic disclosure of exactly how the international drug trade operates—and because Teresa’s successive accomplices and lovers are thinly sketched, scarcely characterized at all. This is unfortunate, since there’s considerable dramatic potential in such vividly conceived figures as courtly “narco” godfather Epifanio Vargas, freelance drug-runner Santiago Fisterra (who supplants the late Güero in Teresa’s bed), Teresa’s bisexual prison cellmate and later partner Patricia O’Farrell, and criminous attorney (and Teresa’s next lover) Teo Aljarafe. “La Mexicana” (a.k.a. The Queen of the South) herself is fairly opaque, her strength and resolve asserted rather than dramatized. And Pérez-Reverte skirts absurdity by charting her development into a passionate reader, beginning with her jail-time immersion in The Count of Monte Cristo (“Edmond Dantes is me”). The action, fairly generic, moves from Mexico to Spain’s southern coast, the Strait of Gibraltar, and Morocco, peaking in a dangerous episode in the Black Sea. Still, Pérez-Reverte comes through with a smashing climax in which Teresa learns the truth about Güero, faces down the elusive Don Epifanio, and puts her own spin on her deal with USDEA officials (“Cooperation in exchange for immunity”). Too little, too late.
Pérez-Reverte at his best is a matchless entertainer. But this, his weakest novel, is a major disappointment.Pub Date: June 7, 2004
ISBN: 0-399-15185-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
A good beach read, set in a beach town.
A fast-paced novel about the enduring friendship of three young women who spent their summers in Avalon on the Jersey shore before dispersing across the country.
The book opens with Kate, now a lawyer in the girls’ original hometown of Philadelphia. Kate’s fiance, a man she met in law school, breaks up with her the same day she learns she is pregnant with their baby. Then we meet Vanessa, now living in New York City. Vanessa has given up her career as an art dealer in the city to raise her daughter Lucy and is struggling with her husband’s confession that he recently came close to cheating on her. Then we meet Dani, an aspiring novelist who has just lost her job in a bookstore in San Francisco. Dani is still dealing with drug and alcohol addictions and is still looking for Mr. Right. When the three decide to get together and spend the 4th of July holiday back in Avalon, they are each haunted by memories of Kate’s twin brother, Colin, who tragically drowned there eight years earlier when they were all on the cusp of adulthood. Woven into the mystery of Colin’s demise are other issues of childhood that influenced each of the young women. As they look back on the painful past and flirt with future opportunities, the women finally share the secrets they had kept all those years, forgive one another and prepare themselves to move on in positive ways.
A good beach read, set in a beach town.Pub Date: May 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-220381-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Natural storyteller Hunter knows the value of the occasional poignant scene to give his firefights breathing room. Not for a...
In the category of slam-bang, testosterone-laden, body-bag filling, hellzapoppin' potboilers, this is as good as it gets.
For those who may have wondered about the gene pool that helped produce master sniper Bob Lee Swagger, the author's demigod of a series hero (Time to Hunt, 1998, etc.), here's the tell-all prequel. Earl Swagger, valiant marine, Congressional Medal of Honor winner, is Bob Lee's demigod of a daddy. We also meet Bob Lee's brave and beautiful mama. It's the summer of 1946, and Hot Springs, Arkansas, is under the thumb of gangster Owney Maddox, who has a dream: he wants to refashion Hot Springs into an oasis of sin, a place where Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, et al., will feel safe, comfortable, and cosseted. He’s halfway there. On the surface Special Prosecutor Fred C. Becker doesn't seem much of a deterrent, but Becker has a dream too: he wants to be Arkansas's youngest governor ever. Moreover, he has a plan: to bring Owney down by recruiting and training an elite task force that can strike hard, fast, and ruthlessly. Earl Swagger—who better?—is charged with the training. At first, things go right. The recruits are eager and motivated. Aided by the element of surprise, they deliver a series of blows that shake the Maddox realm to its Sodom-like foundations. But then Maddox, with the whole of New York gangsterdom to draw from, recruits his own elite force. The stage is set for blood-drenched confrontations, during which lots of bad men are killed, some good men are betrayed, and Earl performs exactly the way Bob Lee's progenitor should.
Natural storyteller Hunter knows the value of the occasional poignant scene to give his firefights breathing room. Not for a minute to be taken seriously, but, all in all, a blast.Pub Date: July 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-684-86360-X
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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