Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

David Shafer
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Mulholland Books, 2014

Three main characters of this novel have different ways of life and live at different places on the planet. With the development of the plot their destinies intertwine in unexpected ways, and it is worth noting that two of the three heroes already know each other.

Of these three characters is only one woman, young, exotic Asian working in a non-profit organization based in the United States Leila Majnoun. Leila arrives with humanitarian aid to Myanmar. Her mission is to scout out the situation, find out what help the state needs to provide the best. Regardless of gender, Leila is a brave, courageus woman, with the ability to overcome difficulties. And difficulties Leila has plenty. Her cargo was taken to the military customs. A local general who handles things avoids her. She has almost no allies in the country. In case of emergency no one will come to rescue her. The only help she has is a local taxi driver, but he is powerless against the army. In an attempt to find this general Leila and the taxi driver pulls into a kind of base near the jungle where Leila accidentally sees two mercenaries who speak English guarding something important and secret, otherwise no one would hire the elite troops for protection.

Two other characters of the novel, Mark Deveraux and Leo Crane, once were friends in college, but they parted ways after graduation. Mark settled in Brooklyn, thanks to the success of his debut book in the self help genre, which has sold a huge number of copies. Now Mark is writing his second book, and becomes something of a personal guru/mentor for the boss of a large corporation SineCo James Straw. The big boss was impressed with Mark’s book and as Mark has signed a contract with a subsidiary company of SineCo, that in fact Mark is already working on Straw.

Lifepath of Leo Crain is significantly different from Mark’s. Leo is a failure, with the possible psychological and mental health problems. The son of wealthy parents, he and his several sisters received an inheritance in the form of a company for the production of games and now live on that. Leo abundantly uses drugs, drinks in the morning, is not stable, does not stay long on one job.
David Shafer is a talented writer. He's a great stylist, he has the experience, the characters in his book are full-blooded people. And this talented writer has written not entirely successful novel. «Whiskey Tango Foxtrot» as a thriller is mediocre enough to forget its plot in a few weeks, as a drama, or High Literature, the novel is too uneven and subordinated to a thriller story, as near future SF , it is not cooked enough and with a bend in the theory.

The first half of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is wonderful. I especially liked how Shafer lets us wonder in the mist and is not in a hurry to open the cards. Under the cards I have in mind the theory of a larger conspiracy: the three central characters as if just live their lives, overcome their difficulties, each struggling with his or her loneliness. In the first third of the book there is no hint to science fiction at all, it's good-quality prose about young professionals. It would be better novel if it remained in this vein - a bitter statement on the harsh reality.

And the characters in fact are all close to the heart, the new American generation, no longer kidults, not yet formed adults, spitting on ideals. The most prominent is Leila, fragile Asian-American, rotating in the men's militarized society, but not even thinking that at any time she can be raped (such an idea only once visited the heroine). Mark of the trio of characters is least sympathetic to us, because of this he’ll get the main mission - to rehabilitate himself in front of friends, himself and humanity in general.

Once Shafer introduces his theory of digital conspiracy plot as the slender design of the novel begins to sag. The idea of a storage server for all the information about the people living on the planet is not new. Only in the last year I have read a few works with a similar idea. And every time the world conspiracy theory with an emphasis on the accumulation of digital information has no valid arguments. This idea usually is built on the arguments usually vague. How really ownership of all the digital information about people can lead to total control over the people? Shafer builds some shaky structure of the future, with no real backups. And since evil can not impress and scare enough, then the threat to peace seems phantom. All the arguments in this case are reduced to the commonplace "to spy on people is bad." This we already know.

Unable to build a potent image of the enemy, Shafer throws his heroes to fight against windmills. Both secret community are so smooth, they do not have any form at all. The mission of the trinity against mythical evil is also doubtful. As in the worst examples of literature of adventure, the world from destruction is necessarily saved by the amateurs. Secret organization entirely relies on the wild girl, alcoholic and plagiarist - apparently the situation inside the organization was quite bad, if it would need to use help of unbalanced people.

The second half of the novel is quite a burden to read. The first one slowly build a story, and that was a plus to the novel. We did in fact read a mainstream novel. The second part is already full thriller, shamelessly overlong, sweetened with melodrama between Leo and Leila, predictable and linear. Shafer writes in the second half still brilliantly, but the story buries stylistic clarity under itself.

Talented author Shafer stumbled with this debut. He writes charmingly, but the plot of this book is very much shaky like tango after whiskey. Or foxtrot after whiskey. There is probably no difference.

The Shining Girls

Lauren Beukes
The Shining Girls

Mulholland Books, 2013

Summer of 1974. A serial killer who travels through time, Harper Curtis, gives an orange toy pony to a girl playing outside her house. Th girl's name is Kirby, and many years later, Harper will trt to kill Kirby, but she will survive.

Curtis has the opportunity to travel back and forth in time by accident. In 1929, he accidentally found the house of a gambler, Pole by birth. The Pole house was House - a place that bloodthirsty and making its inhabitants dependent. The House holds its owner as sort of hostage, making to kill and opening the door to the future and the past. Harper kills the Pole and makes House his refuge. There, in the House, Harper will keep his victims’ things, as well as record their names. The mechanism of movement over time is not explained, but Harper understands that he can not travel before 1929 and past 1993. In his victims the killer chooses the Shining girls from the title of the novel - a talented, capable, bright young women. Maniac acts on the round system: he always meets his future victim, when she is still a child , and then kills her as a grown woman, leaving at the victim’s body some artifact from the future.

The only surviving victim of the attacks is Kirby, who lives with her mother. Kirby attempted murder is committed when the girl walks her dog in the rain. Harper would have killed the girl if it were not the dog, which attacked the killer and received a knife in its neck. Wounded Kirby with the dead dog on her arms barely escapes from the forest to the road, where she was transported to the hospital.

After rehabilitation, Kirby chooses to study the journalism, and makes the purpose of her life the capture of a maniac. Lacking funds, Kirby can not hire a private detective, so she becomes an amateur sleuth herself. She takes an intern place in the Chicago newspaper Chicago Sun-Times, where her mentor is a sports columnist Dan, who worked for many years as a crime reporter and wrote about the attempt on Kirby.

In her third book Lauren Beukes mixes chrono SF with a detective story about a serial killer. The Shining Girls is named a thriller, only you barely find thrills here.

Science fiction amd mystery must work with each other and perform their functions. Time travel here is not explained. The House is a portal leading to a certain time period, one has only to select a particular time. The presence of House as certain accumulation of evil forces is intended to humanize the killer. Harper himself is not a cruel man, it is House that makes him kill. The serial killer’s past, too, is designed to alleviate the guilt from Harper: he is a veteran of the war, betrayed by his country, a gimp soldier. But a few strokes of the past is not enough to elicit sympathy for a ruthless killer. And because a good half of the book tells about the crimes of the murderer, the reader will have to spend half a book in the company of a disgusting character, cartoonish and flat.

Mystery element does not cause delight either. Chapters of the murders resemble each other, only the victim changes, but the essence is the same: the killer is playing with a child, and then in the future calmly killing the victim. Beukes forced to repeat herself after the third victim. Gradually it becomes clear that the chapters with the killings can be skipped, and nothing will be lost for the reader.

Against the background of faceless killer and his victims the heroine of the book, surviving victim Kirby is somewhat more deep character. Beukes made Kirby a punk girl, sarcastic person, with mutilated body and soul. But the scars on the soul and the body have not changed the life of the heroine too much. Kirby's body is fully functional, and if there was an emotional trauma, it is gone. Having survived the murderous attempt, barely survived, Kirby is surprisingly cheerful. The attempt does not seem to affect the life of the heroine, which is very unlikely. If you compare Kirby with the heroine of Gillian Flynn’s novel Dark Places Libby Day, which was the only surviving victim of the killer, who murdered the whole Libby’s family, it will seem like Kirby had not been stabbed by a maniac, but just fell off the bike.

Sometimes human features erupt in Kirby: in the very first scene of the novel she is a whimsical, rowdy child, and later, a sarcastic intern, Kirby takes her intern responsibilities lightly, slacking off work. But most of the time Kirby is just a type of the amateur detective, whom literature already has seen enough.

The whole team of researchers and assistants did not help revive Beukes time and place. Chicago from the novel is a set of stamps and names scattered through the text, so that the reader does not forget where things happen. And the time period 1930-1993 is a meaningless frame. The main part of the book takes place in the early nineties: the newspapers had not yet lost to the Internet, mobile phones have not replaced the landlines, DNA tests have not caught on to the police. But Byukes writes in language of the 90's, not 00s, and then slipping on the details. Kirby and Dan go to the concert of Naked Raygun in the middle of 1992. The band is called punk band, although at that time the band's style has changed from hardcore to power pop (and they did not play punk at all) , and in '92 the band broke up.

In the dialogue between Dan and Kirby, he says that a gangbanger killed one of the victims. But at that time the term "gangbanger" was rarely used, and when used, it’s definition was altogether different of today’s definition.

The Shining Girls is hardly a thriller. The novel is predictable from start to finish. What can the novel offer to chill the blood? Murders are similar to each other, and you know very well that they will happen and happen. Dan and Kirby will go to concerts, sports games, periodically review the dusty boxes of useless material. At the very least you'd expect a smart end. Alas, everything is based on the coincidence, and then completely reduced to the fist fight.

The Shining Girls neither shine nor warm.

Point and Shoot

Duane Swierczynski
Point and Shoot

Mulholland Books/Mulholland UK, 2013

I should immediately warn you: Point and Shoot should be read only after if you are familiar with the previous two books of the trilogy. This third book about Charlie Hardie does not really work as a stand alone novel, which, if read in isolation from the previous books of the series, will not have much sense.

For the same reason, write a review on Point and Shoot is pretty hard: a reviewer every time is risking to step on the minefield of spoilers. Those who have read the first and second books already know what happened to Charlie Hardie before he, at the beginning of the third book, found himself on the Earth's orbit. Those who have not read previous books, you’d better run and get Fun and Games and Hell and Gone as soon as possible.

The first novel of the series was not for me not just one of the best thrillers of 2011, but one of the best thrillers ever written. Duane Swierczynski’s imagination knocks you down, and the novel could justly be called the King of the Pageturners. Hell and Gone had a very different pace: the novel was important as part of the whole story, but on its own was a disappointing read. The author went too far with the melodrama, and the book smelled of cardboard and stupidity.

The third book was to be decisive: Will Swierczynski be on the level of the first book, or will fail, as in the case of the second? Point and Shoot is a worthy conclusion of the trilogy, but still not up to the level of Fun and Games. In the first two books Swierczynski used so many unexpected twists that it seemed there’d not left any for the third. Certainly not. In Point and Shoot imagination is bursting, so there will be enough surprises for a few more books. Having started the book on the orbit of the Earth, Unkillable Chuck as a meteorite will rush to Earth to save his family.

Disappointing point in the novel is only that a sense of fatalism disappeared, which was plenty in the first book. The plot wobbles, twists surprise, Charlie is striking in its indestructibility, but from the very first pages it becomes clear how the book will end.

And hard to read lines like these with a straight face:

«Hardie decided he wanted a beer. Like, yeah, right now. It was the morning in Philadelphia, but it was afternoon here in space. He should have insisted that they install a cooler in this damned thing, maybe arrange for monthly shipments of quarter-kegs or even a couple of six-packs. Beer is packed with nutrients, right? If you're going to stick a guy in a tin can, at least give him a couple of cans to open every now and again.
But no. The satellite was too small for such an extravagance as a beer. »

However, the trilogy is complete. BOOM! It’s your own fault, if you haven’t read it yet.

A Single Shot

Matthew F. Jones
A Single Shot

Mulholland Books UK, 2011

Hunter John Moon goes out of his trailer in the morning to hunt. He illegally kills deers, each time risking getting caught. John’s father has lost the farm at the time because of the banking collapse, and John has enough problems of his own. He does not stay long at any work, his wife left him, taking with her their son. Since money is always tight, and free meat is good.

John shoots a deer from a distance, and then long pursues a wounded animal. When he hears the bushes rustle, he shoots. The deer appears from the other side, Moon shoots it, too. Going to the bushes, where he first heard a rustle, John finds the body of a young girl he accidentally killed. Exploring the place of illegally camp, he also finds a bag of money and a lot of drugs. After searching the body, John reads the note written by the killed girl, in which she writes about her boyfriend, with whom she head over heels in love. John hides the body in a cave, takes the money and the carcass of a deer and drags all of it to the trailer. Moon wants to use the money to bring back his wife and a child. Later, John realizes that the money belongs to a couple of farmers, whose house a few years ago was robbed, and they were both brutally murdered. Conscience and the people who owned the bag with money begin to pursue John Moon.

«A Single Shot» is what is now called the rural noir. The novel story is indeed close to noir, first of all because it is about good people doing bad things. John Moon is an honest, but a broken hero. He is «a good-looking guy ..., gentle and with a good sense of humor». Life was not fair to him, but he has no inner core, to resist to the end and did not succumb to temptations. He takes the stolen money (stealing already stolen), but for the benefit of the family. He kills the girl, but it was an accident. Moon is visited by the idea to go to the police and confess, to explain the situation, but here healso lacks confidence. He has several prior convictions, and who would believe him? Who would believe a poacher, an unemployed, who took the stolen money? John is not the only one in the novel, who came under the influence of money or a bad company.

«A Single Shot» is a greater story, where all are the details. And Matthew F. Jones catches in his style the importance of detailes. But what distinguishes this book and makes it extraordinary, it's attitude towards death. Deprivation of human life is not just another everyday event, it can break a man (which is why this novel was compared to "Crime and Punishment"). Murder deprives sleep, exhausts, causes burning with fever. Conscience like a tumor eats away the brain, the heart is accelerated, then almost stops, and lungs are filled with molten lead. The dead girl even after death will not leave John alone, not only her soul but the body will haunt the accident killer. And the payback is not such that you will expect.

"A Single Shot" hits the bull's-eye.

Alpha

Greg Rucka
Alpha

Mulholland Books UK, 2012

Jad Bell, a former military man, who fighted in wars in the elite U.S. troops, now unemployed, remained without a job not a long time. From the head of one of the secret services Jed gets an offer - to become a consulting security manager in one of the largest entertainment parks of the country. Bell feels that something is wrong, but accepts the offer, and the management of the park happily takes Bell to work as an undercover. The park is similar to Disneyland: thousands of visitors every day, billions dollars profit every year, maximum what can happen is one of the kids falls down and scratches his knee. The only thing that gives a signal to the alarm is a dead body of one of park employees found next to a park, and there are serious concerns that a man was killed in the park.

In parallel Rucka tells the story of a young man from Odessa, recruited by a terrorist organization, which makes a young man an American, transporting him to the United States, sending to serve in the American army, and then to university. The Ukrainian, whose real name is Matias, will be a leader of the capture of the park, and Bell will try to neutralize the terrorists, especially since on the day of attack in the park comes Jad's ex-wife and his daughter Athena.

The book has been compared with “Die Hard”, and they do have similarities. The resemblance is superficial, as in "Die Hard" not for the first time the plot about the release of the hostages by a tough guy has been used. Bell, as the military (even then, probably, the word "former" is superfluous), leads a team of soldiers, all of whom serve in the U.S. Special Forces. The point is, a team of terrorists was trained in the same Special Forces. Rucka surprises, when makes Bell’s daughter deaf: Athena and her classmates come to the park from the school for deaf children.

Rucka will surprise the reader a lot of times, especially you here will be tormenting by those questions: who are these terrorists and what they need. Although Rucka also tells the story from the bad guy’s point of view, it does not make the situation clearer. The novel will be read in two sitings, as the pages will fly.

But still: «Alpha» is a good commercial fiction, but not just a good fiction. Too many cliches here, too much calculated, and you can see, how an editor and writer have work on the plot. There is the violence there, but it is harmless. There are twists, but not too much, so that the reader won’t be confused.

Last year, Mulholland Books published two books by Duane Swierczynski, «Fun & Games» and «Hell & Gone». So Swierczynski played with cliches and patterns far more successful, he much less worried about what reader would love and what not. His books are more fun and more original.

«Alpha» is a book from that category, so it is impossible to close the book before the ending, but I hoped it would be something more than this.

Guilt by Association

Marcia Clark
Guilt by Association

Mulholland Books UK, 2011

A Deputy DA Rachel Knight walks home along the dark streets of Los Angeles when he hears the sounds of fire sirens. Out of curiosity, Knight, taking advantage of an acquaintance, steps on the police cordon area to take a look. From the cheap hotel where has been a fire, the coroner’s assistants come out with two bodies, and in one of them she recognizes her colleague, also a DA Jake. When later it appears that the second victim was a young boy prostitute, Knight can not find a reason what Jake would do in a place like that with a male whore. Jake as Knight knew him was sweet and kind person. FBI starts an investigation, working a theory that it was a murder/suicide: a pedophile Jake first killed the boy and then himself. Knight does not believe in this version and, risking his ass, tries to lead an independent investigation. The main case in this novel becomes another investigation: rape of the daughter of a rich doctor, holding a few clinics in LA. After the death of Jake his working cases have been spread out to other prosecutors, and Knight gets not the easiest one of them. Knight uses help of LAPD Detective Bailey Keller in searching for criminals (rapist and Jake’s killer). Soon Knight gets more threats, and what was obvious, becomes no longer obvious.

A former prosecutor herself, Marcia Clark knows how the justice system works. Knowledge of the inner game is a huge plus of the novel. We have read many books where the detectives conduct their own investigation against orders. And in these books, everything goes quickly and smoothly. In «Guilt by Association» Clark describes in detail the danger of interference with the investigation, which FBI is involved in. Knight then actually risks not only her career but also her freedom, risking ending up behind bars.

Both cases investigated by Knight are not the easiest, with a minimum of clues, but impudence and connections help the main character and her partner press to nail one suspect after another.

Despite the fact that Knight works in «Special Trials, the small, elite unit that handled the most comlex and high-profile cases», she has to deal with not high-ranking officials and corporate owners, but with the petty criminals: bangers, drug addicts and thieves. «Guilt by Association» has a very tight plot, no rabbits out of hats.

The main character Rachel Knight is not quite an original character, though. She is hard outside and soft inside. When she sees the body of her colleague, she almost loses consciousness. Several times throughout the book, the woman barely holds tears back. At the same time, Knight shows the hardness of the decisions and actions. To achieve justice and restore the honor of the late colleague for her is more important than losing a job.

There are also a few comic moments, such as the gang leader, who flirts with the prosecutor, which almost puts murder charges on him, or a police lieutenant who lives at the expense of what he and his brother used to come up developed a popular computer game.

Sometimes the novel gets too women-ish: Clark pays too much time choosing clothes for the heroine, and chapters begin with Knight’s mornings. Actually, you can immediately get down to business without having these details.

On the cover James Ellroy's blurb suggests that it is «a damn, damn, good thriller». It is difficult to argue with it.

Hell & Gone

Duane Swierczynski
Hell & Gone

Mulholland Books UK, 2011

Write about the second part of the Charlie Hardie trilogy about «Hell & Gone» is pretty hard. Those who have read the first part, «Fun & Games» (and are there those who have not read it? Then you should be ashamed of: it is one of the best novels published last year. Mistakes should be corrected: buy this book immediately!), had lots of fun and they do not need any advice, they will buy «Hell & Gone» for sure. Because after reading the first book, one can’t not read the second one.

If you still assume that those who have not read the first part do exist in nature, they would hardly need to read a review of the second part: the fear of spoilers does not allow them to read even a review of the first part. Respectively, those remain who have read this book already. For them, perhaps, all of the following is written.

Charlie Hardie, the protagonist of the trilogy, «had been nearly drowned, shot in his left arm, shot in the side of his head, and almost shot in the face at point-blank range», but is still alive. Now he falls into the hands of Accident People - those scoundrels, who unsuccessfully tried to kill him in the previous book. Accident People, a secret organization with immense possibilities, decide to keep Charlie's life. Modern medicine is capable of anything (especially in the hands of scum), and now Charlie darned, sewed and brought into consciousness. Our hero has been waiting for a brutal massacre on him, but Accident People surprise him. Charlie is left alive and placed in a secret underground prison. Moreover - Charlie is in charge of the prison, where in addition several dangerous criminals serve time. Getting out of prison is not possible: if someone tries to escape, everybody will die. Meanwhile, Deke Clark, an FBI agent and the only person whom Hardie trusts, at the end of the first book has got a message for help from Charle, and now tries to figure out where his friend is gone and who is behind his abduction.

With sadness we have to admit, but this book is not as good as the first part. After the first book, which was one continuous action, you do not expect that the action will stop, and vice versa - will turn into an anti-action, because what the prison is if not restriction of movement? I would be glad, if «Hell & Gone» would appear a prison novel. But «Hell & Gone» combines with prison novels only that there is also a prison in it. Why dangerous criminals of the world (actually comical characters) were not immediately killed, but placed in the prison from which there is no escape anyway? Motivations, given by the author, I find not convincing. If Accident People wanted to use these prisoners, they would have used them and not held for several years in prison. In addition, the characters gathered in a secret prison are all dumb. There would be no use of them.

Swierczynski has gone too far in this book with coincidences and melodramatism. The first book was strong because the plot was such that a coincidence had no place in it, but you couldn’t find melodramatism there even if you tried hard.

The book is written in the same style as «Fun & Games». In the first book the style combined with the plot successfully: chopped phrases and non-stop action, - but in the second book prison isolation and darkness require long sentences, slowing down the language, but Swierczynski left the patter of the first book, breaking the line between style and plot.

Despite its flaws, the book definitely has something to enjoy. The novel has a great beginning and an unexpected ending. We learn more about Charlie's past life. Fragments of a book on the relationship between Hardie and his late partner are the most stunning here. And the plotline with Deke Clark delivers.

«Hell & Gone», if considered as a bridge to the third part, is a not bad book, but if we consider the novel as a standalone product - it is close to failure.

Whatever it was, I’m looking forward to the third part.

Fun & Games

Duane Swierczynski

Fun & Games


Mulholland Books UK, 2011

Lane Madden, third-rate actress, drives on Hollywood highway to unwind and breathe the air, when a psychopath begins to pursue her. Miraculously surviving the accident, Madden seeks salvation and gets into one of the empty houses in Hollywood Hills. By coincidence, soon in this house arrives Charlie Hardie, an ex-cop, now a man with a curious profession – he is a housesitter. Hardie, for a few years after the massacre of his partner and his family by Albanian mobsters, has been flying across the United States, guarding expensive houses of the rich, while they are away. The next gig is also not going to be anything extraordinary, just watch old movies and drink beer all day. But in the house Hardie meets an intruder - Madden, armed with a mic stand. The actress thinks that Hardie is one of Them, and almost kills him in self-defense. THEY are The Accident People. When the housesitter has still convinced the actress that he is not one of Them, but simply has come to watch the house during the absence of the owner, he understands that these professional hitmans will not leave alive neither him nor the actress.

If you've read once about a book that it is a page-turner and endless action, then it was a lie. Because compared to the «Fun & Games» other books may seem a snail runs. The action begins with the first page and does not stop at all. The heroes of the book have an opportunity to think only on the run, on the walk, crawling on all fours, in a jump, in the car chase. By heroes, I mean not only Hardie and Madden, but The Accident People as well. The narrative changes from Hardie’s point of view and from The Accident People’s point of view. And the mysterious killers have to come up with more and more ingenious plans to assassinate an actress, along with Hardie, that is him who puts a spoke in the wheel of well-functioning mechanism.

You might think «Fun & Games» is just another shooter. And it's true. But what is wrong with this shooting, if the author has one hundred aces up his sleeve and he is a crooked gambler. Moreover, «Fun & Games» is a science-fiction crime novel, and it is possible that the final book of the trilogy will show us that that it is not even sci-fi, but fantasy. There were quite a lot of successful hybrids of crime and fantasy in recent years, but this hybrid is absolutely original. Fantastic elements allow Swierczynski invent more and more new plot twists. Here, indeed, there is fun and games. Swierczynski is able to make his characters run. The fact that this is only the first book of the trilogy says only that the author has shown not all of his possibilities.

Hardie himself is far from original. He is an ex-cop who after the shooting of his partner and his family, refused to contact with his own family, safely hid it, so that what happened to his partner, has not repeated with Hardy. But what happens with Hardie and how he has managed to end up in such a story, this is a highly original and sometimes extremely funny.

People should build queues in shops to buy «Fun & Games».

Triple Crossing

Sebastian Rotella

Triple Crossing


Mulholland Books, 2011

Valentine Pescatore, after got into trouble in his native Chicago, moved closer to the Mexican border in San Diego, where he began to work as a Border Patrol Agent. Pescatore’s supervisor Agent Garrison is a dirty cop and carries out assignments for the serious people from the cartel. American government has long been dreaming to expose Harrison, but he is very careful and does not make mistakes. When Pescatore violates the law by crossing the border with Mexico, it offers big troubles for. American female agent Isabel Puente investigating the affairs of the influential members of the cartel, offers Pescatore to go undercover, rubbing in the credibility of Garrison, which can lead to the top of the cartel - Junior Ruiz Caballero. This way the agent may avoid prison. Pescatore, a rookie, agrees, but also manages to sleep with Puente. And if beautiful Puente entirely trusts Pescatore, then one more important character of the book - Leo Mendez, a former Mexican journalist and now head of anti-corruption unit in Tijuana – believes that Pescatore is an unreliable source that can work on both sides. Mendez is not only famous for his probity that even causes fear among dishonest: he also heads the so-called The Diogenes Group, which includes the most proven people of Mexico, and two aides of Mendez are called Athos and Porthos.

When Garrison is killed in a shootout, Pescatore is embroiled in a web of intrigue, working for the cartel. The undercover agent after a certain time is cut off from Puente and Mendez. Now, for him the most important thing is to survive.

Rotella is a journalist, who have been writing for decades about the US-Mexican border. He know what happens at the junction of the two states. Because of that the novel seems at times more non-fiction, than fiction. Human trafficking (and not only from South America but also from Asia and Eastern Europe), drug trafficking and piracy, arms smuggling, lawlessness in Mexocan prisons - all that Rotella describes as a matter of course. The author digs much deeper and dedicates the reader in the whole corrupt scheme, linking Americans and Mexicans. Subordination of the Federal Police to Mexican cartel and the city police to corrupt officials, close cooperation between U.S. senators and psychopath of the Mexican cartel. These schemes works in novel’s plot. The plot, by the way, is rather disingenuously made. Part of the intrigue is predictable, but the other part will present surprises.

Of all the heroes of the book the most interesting is Pescatore (Puente is nothing more than a faceless, but pretty representative of American power, and Mendez is roughly described fighter for justice), as the most hesitant and unsure of himself and others. He is caught between two abysses - between the thugs of the cartel and Mendez who hating the agent.

Style of Rotella immediately gives us impression that the author is a journalist. He writes dryly, at length, sometimes there is mismatch between the fast scenes and "slow" language. Here the author describes Puente: «She advanced with lithe, sure-footed strides, grinning playfully. She had her hair pulled back today like a flamenco dancer, bringing out the feline bone structure, the wide-set eyes. She was diminutive, athletically well proportioned, wearing a snug gold turtleneck and matching corduroy pants. The belt holster peeking out of her down vest was empty; US agents were forbidden to carry firearms on Mexican soil. But Méndez suspected that she was packing her second gun, a short-barreled automatic, in one of her knee-high suede boots or the bag over her shoulder.» And this is Pescatore after using drugs: «What did he remember about her? Her name: Marisol? Soledad? The tops of her breasts swelling out of a leotard. Extra heft in the hips and thighs. Turning, posing on the dance floor, swaying against him in knee-length leather pants. Marisol-or-Soledad was from Calexico. Said his accent in Spanish was cute, reminded her of this South American singer on MTV Latino. She was one of the platoon of women waiting when the homeboys arrived at the ranch. The place was fancied up for a party: mariachis, an outdoor bar, a disc jockey on the gazebo spinning tunes. Oldies for cholos: "Always and Forever," "Who's That Lady?," "Lean On Me." But the mood was less than mellow because Pelón wandered around firing one-armed volleys at the stars with his AK-47."

Perhaps in his next novel Rotella will be more concise and give up on his love for excessive descriptiveness.

«Triple Crossing» is certainly a fascinating and dangerous journey to Latin America, and Rotella in his debut novel shows that he is capable of much.