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THE HOUSE OF WOLFE
by James Carlos Blake
Mysterious Press, March 2015
248 pages
$24.00
ISBN: 0802122469


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THE HOUSE OF WOLFE: A BORDER NOIR, is dark indeed. By page 9, the bodies are stacking up, and by the end of the book, the pile is as high as the eerily portrayed mountains of rubbish in Mexico City's ever-glowing dumps. And murder isn't the only crime. Throw in rape, kidnapping, gun-running, pickpocketing—the fast-paced plot is crime-ridden and complicated almost to the point of unbelievability. Almost. But James Carlos Blake also makes this thriller very real using multiple points of view and gritty details that sometimes even teeter on the edge of the poetic, and that keeps the reader thoroughly engaged and believing. Plus, everyday real-life news stories make it clear that this kind of over-the-top casual violence could happen in South Texas and Mexico City, which merely adds to the dark realism of the fiction.

Right from the start, the opening narrator Rudy Max makes it clear that the Wolfe family has both legitimate businesses and what they refer to as the shade trade—gun-running. He also makes it clear that the Wolfes live by their own code, so it's no surprise that when they're threatened, the Wolfes take action, whether the threat comes from petty thieves or an ambitious gang leader in Mexico City. And while lots of minor crimes and subplots swirl throughout the novel, the main threat to the Texas Wolfes is the kidnapping in Mexico City of Jessie, along with an entire wedding party of which she was a member. Luckily for Jessie, her cousin Rayo is also at the wedding and overhears the details of the kidnapping and is able to get word to the Texas Wolfes as well as set the Mexican branch of the family with its network of informants and problem-solving operations in motion. Blake breaks the narrative up into a series of mostly present-tense observations from a wide range of characters, so the reader is in the midst of the action on every front as the kidnappers execute the crime and hold their hostages, Jessie struggles to escape, and the Wolfes try to get to Jessie before it's too late. This back-and-forth-and-around way of telling the story also enables Blake to work in some backstory for some of the characters and create slightly deeper connections to them, although they're all kept somewhat at arm's length because this isn't a novel about deeply drawn characters: it's a thriller, and the action is the all-important element. Blake never loses sight of that fact, and even when he pauses to complete a picture of a character or give some hint of motivation, he keeps the plot moving forward. But while he keeps plot the focus, Blake also does a masterful job of creating place by providing telling details of sights and smells that put the reader right in the cantinas, cafes, and slums of South Texas and Mexico City.

THE HOUSE OF WOLFE is the latest in a series of Wolfe novels, but it reads easily as a stand-alone. It does, though, make the reader want to know more about these tough, likeable, risk-taking, live-by-their-own-code Wolfes.

§ Meredith Frazier, a writer with a background in English literature, lives in Dallas, Texas

Reviewed by Meredith Frazier, February 2015

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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