As a journalist,
Rotella tells it the way it is, straight talk, all facts about life south of
the border. A Pulitzer finalist, he found many stories he could never fully
substantiate, tales all fascinating but unprintable for a newspaper. Taking all
these fables, gossip, innuendo, and rumors, he works them into a border story
the likes of which you have never read and treats us to his debut novel.
Valentine
Pescatore, a wannabe street punk from Chicago is given one last chance to
straighten up his life and with the help of an uncle, has found his way to the
Border Patrol. In his personal life he is a loose cannon; his supervisor’s a
dirty cop and life is an alcohol-fueled thrill-a-minute. He receives a warning
after he is suspected of chasing a cholo
into Mexico, but finds himself given a reprieve if he rats out his supervisor.
Pescatore finds
himself in a gunfight and ends up driving his wounded supervisor to the
underworld bosses in Mexico, but once there can’t leave. He goes undercover,
joining in the illegal activities and reaching out to agents in the US—when
able—to let them know he is alive and working from deep inside the organization.
As the story
progresses, we are introduced to the triple border, Argentina, Brazil and
Paraguay, the heart of all smuggling, where Arabs and Chinese mix into the flow
and money of illegal activities as they move up through Central America hitting
the border we are all more familiar with.
With his life in
jeopardy, Pescatore does his best to keep the blurry lines between right and
wrong straight as he works to keep his cover. Suspecting he is playing the
double-agent game, his superiors make arrangements to setup the gangsters;
everyone comes in guns blazing. The final scenes will drop your jaw in
amazement.
Rotella treats
us to a wild ride into unfamiliar territory with the ferocity that the cartels
hand out on the streets of Mexico; brutal, punishing, and final.
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