May 1, 2020
"It's what we do, we Wolfes, we smuggle." And they've been doing it on both sides of the border?in Texas and in Mexico?through five novels in Blake's Border Noir series. This adventure begins with a gun-smuggling trip gone bad but segues into a rescue mission not directly related to the family business. A cache of pornographic films recovered with the smuggled guns unveils an actress, "Kitty Quick," bearing a striking resemblance to family grande dame Catarina's long-vanished sister. The indomitable, 115-year-old Aunt Cat sends fixers Rudy and Frank, cousins in the Texas branch, to bring Kitty to Cat, who will determine if she's a relative. So begins a rollicking road trip in which the amiable fixers, along with the fetching but no-nonsense Rayo, venture into the porn world and then into the hideaway of Sinaloan drug king El Chubasco, who has acquired Kitty for his harem. The noirish tone is certainly evident here, but this is not as dark as others in the series, more in the vein of a Thomas Perry caper novel, with plenty of blood. As such, it is never less than thoroughly entertaining.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
May 15, 2020
Hold on to your hats. The Wolfe family saga continues in Blake's newest Border Noir. The Wolfes run many legitimate businesses on both sides of the Mexican border, but smuggling is deeply ingrained in the family's history. When a delivery of weapons to Mexico is hijacked and several family members are killed, brothers Rudy and Frank Wolfe and their cousins Rayo and Jessie, all of them involved in the family business, resolve to get revenge and recover the shipment. The brothers, field agents for the family law firm, track down witnesses. Along the way, they pick up a box of porn movies, and when Rayo and Jessie barge in while they're screening them, Jessie asks her Uncle Charlie to make a few black-and-white stills of one of the girls in the film because she's recognized "Kitty Quick" as the spitting image of Sandra Little, the long-missing sister of family doyenne Aunt Cat. Now 115, Cat, who looks and acts 30 years younger, has allowed Jessie to write her life story, which she expects to be published after her death. After seeing the photos, Aunt Cat sends Rudy, Frank, and Rayo on a quest to track down Kitty and bring her to Cat, who claims that she'll know whether they're related. Drawing on the family resources, they start their search in Tucson, the home address of the film company, but discover that Kitty's already moved back to LA. Her agent says she's gone to Mexico with a wealthy man. Therein lies the rub, for the man is El Chubasco, a violent drug lord who's not likely to give her up. Undaunted, the three dig deeper into the family network to plot a rescue fraught with violence and danger. An action-packed story of family loyalties with some surprisingly sentimental undertones.
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