BECOME

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent stumbles across a massive crime syndicate in Galvan’s supernatural thriller.

Santiago cuts a pretty intimidating image, speeding along a Texas road in his ’67 Plymouth Barracuda with his long black hair and his ancient skull ring, listening to Black Sabbath at full blast. It turns out he’s on a mission of conquest—or, more accurately, reconquest. ICE agent Diego DeAntonio doesn’t know it, but he’s right in Santiago’s path. Diego wakes up hung over on a park bench surrounded by last night’s empty bottles; he and his partner, Sarah Parker, are investigating a brutal murder at a local community college that they suspect was committed by an undocumented migrant worker. Diego also has a feeling that something sketchy is going on at the Azul Ranch, but his captain, whose cousin owns the ranch, won’t let him pursue it. Diego sneaks onto it anyway and gets a new warning to stay away—at gunpoint—from none other than a Texas senator. When Sarah is killed while investigating the same case, Diego knows that nothing will stop him from finding the truth. Unfortunately, the truth is more monstrous—literally—than anything he can imagine. Galvan’s prose style is consistently energetic and heightened, as when he describes Diego’s villainous commanding officer: “Diego is always hypnotized by the Captain’s eyebrows, so bushy and solid black, in contrast to his head of pure white locks, slicked back Steven-Seagal-style. He even has that same small erect rattail…no doubt meant to compensate for any feeling of impotence.” The book presents a hodgepodge of contemporary fever dreams—including government conspiracies, child- smuggling operations, and even werewolf mythology—although Galvan seems to have no agenda, other than to shock. That said, the violence is gratuitous, the dialogue mostly inane, and the characters are only minimally developed; Galvan’s primary influence seems to be horror movies, and he borrows from some of them quite blatantly (particularly 1995’s Seven). Unfortunately, the plot goes so far off the rails by the end that readers may lose interest.

A gory but uninspired horror novel, set in the borderlands.