Iron River

November 16, 2009
In bestseller Parker's disappointing third Charlie Hood novel (after The Renegades
), Hood, a Los Angeles sheriff's deputy, joins Operation Blowdown, an attempt to staunch the near constant flow of money and guns across the U.S.-Mexican border. When a shootout during a botched weapons buy leaves the son of the head of a powerful Mexican cartel dead, the fight becomes personal as cartel soldiers cross the border to take revenge on Hood's team. Meanwhile, a faulty product has driven Pace Arms, a family-owned gun manufacturer, nearly to bankruptcy. Unbeknownst to Hood, the man brokering an illegal deal between Pace and another Mexican cartel chief for the production of a revolutionary handgun is Bradley Smith (aka Bradley Jones), the son of bank robber Allison Murrietta, the antiheroine of L.A. Outlaws
, the first and best entry in the series. In this installment, the massive scale of the criminal activity overwhelms the characters.

December 1, 2009
Deputy Charlie Hood (The Renegades, 2009, etc.) copes with love, war and a baffling being who might be an angel, a demon, conceivably both, or none of the above.

Detached from the L.A. Sheriff's Department, Deputy Hood is sent south to join Operation Blowdown, assembled to war against the much-too-successful Mexican drug cartels. It's an overwhelmingly difficult job, never-ending and ever-perilous. As evidence of this, Jimmy Holdstock, one of Charlie's young colleagues, is suddenly snatched by a particularly ruthless cartel—object: torture, mutilation and the kind of prolonged, very public death wickedly calculated to dampen law-enforcement enthusiasm. In the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping, an envelope arrives at Blowdown headquarters, containing a pair of Polaroids. Pictured in one is a dramatically ill-treated Jimmy; in the other, a still-life formed by"a pair of pliers, an electric circular saw, and a long-nozzled barbecue lighter." Clearly, Jimmy needs to be rescued fast. Meanwhile, Mike Finnegan, a strange little man who might furnish some helpful answers resides, severely injured, in the ICU of Buenavista Hospital. He sends for Charlie. The two have never met, but Charlie can't ignore the existence of a peculiar sort of connection between them. They talk. Finnegan wants Charlie to find his missing daughter and offers a quid pro quo that may or may not pertain to the beset Jimmy. The little man—nothing if not mysterious—knows things he can't possibly: about Blowdown, about Charlie's private life. Moreover, he really should have died as the result of his injuries, and not even lovely, smart Dr. Beth Petty can explain his survival. So who or what is Mike Finnegan? It's anybody's guess.

Lacks the seamlessness of Parker's best plotting, but indomitable Charlie is, as always, irresistible. Hard not to warm to a man who—no matter the adversity—insists that"Hope counts."

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 10, 2009
In his third outing after LA Outlaws and The Renegades, L.A. County sheriff's deputy Charlie Hood heads back to the California-Mexico border, this time attached to a federal task force set on breaking open a large gun-smuggling operation. Guns flow south to Mexico just as fast as drugs and people move north. After he accidentally shoots a bystander, one of the ATF guys is taken hostage by a Mexican cartel, and Charlie is key to his rescue. Of course, the agent's safety at the local hospital can't be guaranteed. Meanwhile, an Orange County gun manufacturer is in cahoots with Bradley (son of the late Allison Murrieta) and another Mexican cartel. Add a touch of magical realism (little devils, anyone?), and you can see why our hero is exhausted. Bradley has clearly sold his soul; will Charlie be next? Verdict Parker's complex and brutally descriptive examination of humankind's dark side serves as a jarring, eye-popping treatise on drugs and weapons. It's essential for series fans, but new readers should tackle the other two titles first. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/09.]-Teresa L. Jacobsen, Solano Cty. Lib., Fairfield, CA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2009
Ninety percent of the guns in Mexico come from the U.S., a staggering statistic that inspired Parkers third top-notch thriller to feature Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff Charlie Hood. As part of Operation Blowdown, Deputy Hood must fearlessly navigate Iron River, the gun-trafficking corridor that straddles the Mexican-American border between San Diego, California, and Corpus Christi, Texas. Every moment of the endeavor is suffused with risk, and its not long before one of Charlies teamyoung family man Jimmy Holdstockis kidnapped and tortured. As he negotiates Jimmys release, Hood plumbs the deadly depths of the contraband weapons business, suspecting all the while that a late friends son is intimately involved. He also becomes entangled in the web of Mike Finnegan, a car-accident victim who is privy to a disturbing amount of classified information. Three-time Edgar winner Parkers breathtakingly vivid novels are the product of copious research. This time around, he was astonished to learn how easily 50,000 rounds of ammunition could be procured. (A handful of phone calls got them drop-shipped to his home.) There is always revolution in the hearts of men, the leader of a group of feral Mexican soldiers tells Hood, and now those men have guns to match their hearts. With crisp prose and chilling detail, Parker brings a brutal, bullet-riddled world to light.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)