This Side of Night

May 15, 2019
Lawmen face a group of brutal killers along the Mexican borderlands in the author's third West Texas thriller (High White Sun, 2018, etc.). In Mexico, violent groups fighting to dominate the lucrative drug trade will stop at nothing. Two busloads of normalistas, or student teachers, are stopped and shot. Three are killed, many wounded, and 19 are missing. Across the border, Deputy Sheriff Danny Ford discovers bodies floating in the Rio Grande, known in Mexico as the Río Bravo. Enemies of vicious crime lord Fox Uno may have orchestrated the crimes so the blame would fall on him--quite plausible for a killer who says "I am Death, my friend." Those enemies plotting a hostile takeover include his own son, Martino. Fox Uno crosses over to Murfee, Texas, to see his niece, America. Nicknamed Amé, she is deputy to Sheriff Chris Cherry, the embattled star of the series. His bailiwick is the vast Big Bend region, including a borderland called "a blighted war zone." The Mexican government wants U.S. help in solving the crimes, getting Drug Enforcement Administration Assistant Special Agent Joe Garrison and Sheriff Cherry's department involved. The novel is filled with colorful characters and memorable lines. Eddy Lee "Take-Out" Rabbit is a pathetic meth addict who wants to recover but probably won't. Deputy Danny Ford, an Afghanistan vet, remembers "You never forgot the smell of a fresh corpse." And if readers want to get prompt police attention, they can quote Martino's observation that "It took a surprisingly long time to cut all the way through a man's neck." Meanwhile, Cherry expects to lose reelection while he worries about the safety of his wife, Mel, and their infant son. The story's premise is based on a real event, the disappearance of 43 normalistas in 2014. The author exploits his decades of experience as a federal agent to create a powerful, realistic picture of crime along the southern border. Thriller fans will enjoy this absorbing and disturbing book.

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Starred review from June 3, 2019
The stellar third volume in Scott’s epic Texas border series (after 2018’s High White Sun) draws its inspiration from a real-life tragedy, the 2014 massacre of a busload of Mexican students, which the author attributes to the fictional Nemesio cartel. Things get complicated for Sheriff Chris Cherry of Big Bend County when five bodies are found in a remote West Texas stretch of the Rio Grande. The DEA suspects law enforcement complicity in a neighboring county, a lingering remnant of the corrupt reign of Cherry’s predecessor. There’s also the fact that America Reynosa, Cherry’s brilliant young deputy, is related to the notorious Nemesio cartel leader, Fox Uno, who has escaped from an attempted coup in Mexico and seeks temporary asylum with Reynosa. With Mexican sicarios and rogue American cops seemingly working together to bring down the fugitive cartel boss, it’s up to Cherry, Reynosa, and Deputy Danny Ford, an Iraq War combat vet with demons of his own, to preserve some semblance of law and order in the Big Bend. Scott, a veteran federal agent, writes with authority and gravitas about complex border issues. Fans of Don Winslow and Cormac McCarthy won’t want to miss this one. Agent: Carlie Webber, CK Webber Associates.

June 1, 2019
The opening pages roar with promise as Scott describes a violent scene in heightened language. Students traveling near the Texas-Mexico border are slaughtered in a hail of gunfire, "only a reddish mist left hanging in the air like a bloody thumb print." A few pages later, the aging head of a Mexican drug cartel confronts a snitch tied to a chair. "I am Death, my friend," he says as he approaches with a claw hammer. Readers who think this presages a high-burn crime story should know that Scott is after something else: a re-creation of the societies in which these bad things happen. So be prepared for a narrative line constantly interrupted by backstories, abrupt scene shifts, meditations on family linkages?a lot of these?and even a political campaign as the officer investigating the murders runs for reelection. Scott writes beautifully, dreaming up intriguing action scenes, which those who are focused only on thrills will wish kept going and going. But patient readers will recognize and appreciate Scott's end game: showing us a world where thieves, murderers, and sadists are everyday folk.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)