An often engrossing glimpse into an arduous criminal investigation, despite some missteps.
In this novel based on true events, a Drug Enforcement Agency operative and two California private investigators face numerous hurdles as they investigate a cartel that’s smuggling narcotics into the United States.
When his wife lands a job in Yuma, Arizona, in 1990, DEA Agent Larry Ray Hardin requests a transfer there from San Diego. He soon zeroes in on the case of the Meraz brothers in Mexico; authorities have tied them to heroin, cocaine, and marijuana trafficking, money laundering, and arms smuggling. They’re also allegedly behind the shooting of two DEA agents in 1975 and another agent’s torture and murder 10 years after that, so Larry makes it his personal mission to stop their organization. Although he suspects corruption and leaks among his colleagues, he ultimately finds common ground with two Los Angeles PIs. Jeff Pearce and Randy Torgerson are trying to link the Merazes’ drugs to trucks transporting shrimp, as well as a California seafood company. Unfortunately, many officials, agents, and prosecutors are either crooked or too scared to help, which makes their goal a seemingly impossible task. DeMille (co-author: It Started With a Pencil, 2016) and debut co-authors Hardin, Pearce, and Torgerson’s story is based in fact, but it changes several names and invents many events and conversations. However, it deftly presents the frustrations that law enforcement officials and PIs endure. None of the assistant U.S. attorneys that Larry knows, for example, seem intent on prosecuting the dangerous Merazes. The novel splits the narrative into first-person accounts from Larry’s, Jeff’s, and Randy’s points of view, as well as intermittent third-person narration. This structure allows for brief but intriguing looks into each man’s backstory, as well as startling incidents, such as a sexual-assault allegation. The straightforward prose style keeps the particulars of the ongoing investigations clear. Still, it’s confusing when first-person narration occasionally slips into third, and vice versa, without explanation. There are also muddled dates; Larry and the PIs meet to compare cases in 1991, which contradicts earlier details, such as Randy joining the Los Angeles business in 1992 and the PIs’ investigation starting in 1993.
An often engrossing glimpse into an arduous criminal investigation, despite some missteps.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73363-500-4
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Dianne's Consultant Services
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
