When you’re in the mood for a full-throttle adventure, beginning to end, consider the debut suspense thriller Come and Get her by Bruce Conord. I raced through the pages to find out what deadly hazard hero Jesse Arroyo would face next and whether he’d finally take one risk too many.
The first-person story starts with a gripper. It’s the middle of the night, and Jesse’s ex-girlfriend Debi is on the phone telling him their 21-year-old daughter Sheri is missing. She and two friends crossed the border from Texas into Mexico to visit a nightclub in Nuevo Laredo. Upon leaving, they were kidnapped, but one of the girls escaped and gave the police in Laredo, Texas, the sketchy details.
Sheri was the result of a one-night stand, and a longer-term relationship between Jesse and Debi proved impossible. Debi is the daughter of a wealthy Texas banker, George Pike, and Jesse the son of a hardscrabble Mexican-Apache rancher. Pike wouldn’t let him near his daughter and granddaughter.
To escape those pressures, Jesse joined the Army and buried himself in Afghanistan and the clandestine services for the better part of two decades. Now that he is back stateside, communication between him and Debi is rare. When he enters the Laredo police station, Debi, her husband and Pike are all there, animosity flowing from the old man in waves.
The Laredo police and the FBI are upbeat about Sheri’s safety and confident of the cooperation of the Nuevo Laredo authorities. They are sure a ransom demand will come, and if the family pays it, which of course they will, Sheri will come home. Jesse is far less optimistic. Nuevo Laredo is wracked by cartel violence and two blonde Americans are prime targets for trafficking. The Mexican police, too often in cahoots with the cartels, can’t be counted on. Sadly, he doesn’t trust Pike to pay up, either.
That’s the quick set-up to the story. Conord writes convincingly about how, with 20 years’ operating in a hostile environment where trust was scant on the ground, unlike regrets, which were plentiful, Jesse determines to go after Sheri himself. You know this is a long-shot endeavour, and he sets out to gather intelligence first, then firepower. In 36 hours, he’s in Mexico, looking for allies. At this point, you would be justified in thinking he’s set himself an impossible task.
He visits the office of the La Voz de Nuevo Laredo, an online newspaper, run by Elisabet Monte, who’s plugged into the activities of the cartel thanks to a network of citizen journalists who keep her informed about local murders, rapes, robberies, kidnappings and ‘the disappeared.’ Liza has a very personal reason for pursuing this dangerous work: the cartel murdered her husband and son.
She has a good sense for who was involved in Sheri’s disappearance and insists on helping Jesse. She knows her way around, she knows the people, and he reluctantly accepts. Liza turns out to be a fearless and smart accomplice. The two of them are determined and likeable, as well as people of substance, and you can’t help rooting for them. You might think that a romance springing up between them is a bit far-fetched, but you will probably also think that two such damaged people deserve something consoling in their lives.
As they encounter one dangerous situation after another, they also find admirable people fed up with the cartel violence who are willing to help. One of their most loyal allies is Dog, a stray mutt they adopt who has an acute instinct for danger.
Unlike Don Winslow’s The Cartel and The Border, the book doesn’t tackle head-on the problems created by drugs, guns and money sloshing back and forth across the US-Mexican border. Yet, there’s enough here to make the story feel all-too-real. That impression is aided by Conord’s portrayal of the intransigent attitudes and tactics of US immigration and border patrol personnel.
You’ll find little respite from the non-stop action, and the frustrations baked into the system are so acute that by the end of this story you may feel like you need a good nap. If, that is, you can sleep.
Also see The Dead Women of Juárez by Sam Hawken.
Shadowbook Press
Print/Kindle
£7.59
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
