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A Border Noir
by James Carlos Blake
On a rainy winter night in Mexico City, a ten-member wedding party is kidnapped in front of the groom's family mansion. The perpetrator is a small-time gangster named El Galán, who wants nothing more than to make his crew part of a major cartel and hopes that this crime will be his big break. He sets the wedding party's ransom at five million US dollars, to be paid in cash within 24 hours.
The only captive not related to either the bride or the groom is the young Jessica Juliet Wolfe, a bridesmaid and close friend of the bride. Jessie hails from a family of notorious outlaws that has branches on both sides of the border, and when the Wolfes learn of Jessie's abduction, they fear that the kidnappers will kill the captives after receiving the ransom - unless they rescue Jessie first.
Gritty and exhilarating, The House of Wolfe takes readers on a wild ride from Mexico City's opulent neighborhoods to its frenetic downtown streets and feral shantytowns, as El Galán proves how dangerous it is to underestimate an ambitious criminal, and Jessie's blood kin desperately try to find her before it's too late.
"Starred Review. As always, the writing is both poetic and visceral, and the mostly present-tense narrative keeps the reader engaged as the action rushes toward a surprising and fully satisfying conclusion." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. A hard-edged, fast-moving thriller that will hold your attention hostage - good luck getting away." - Booklist
"This fast-paced, well-plotted thriller reads like a mix of Cormac McCarthy and Elmore Leonard." - Library Journal
"Slightly less violent and slower paced than Blake's last look at the Wolfe family (The Rules of Wolfe, 2013), this installment is an absorbing look at dire poverty, depravity and the all-too-successful business of kidnapping for profit." - Kirkus
"James Carlos Blake has long been one of my favorites, but his Wolfe family saga may be his best work to date. His latest, a complex kidnapping tale, brings to mind Faulkner's storytelling in As I Lay Dying with the grittiness and realism of Cormac McCarthy's border tales." - Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of The Forsaken and the forthcoming The Redeemers
"A writer with as many fine and wonderful skills as those possessed by James Carlos Blake should be well-known and embraced." - Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone
"The promise of [Blake's] early work comes to full maturity in The House of Wolfe, a story as contemporary as a CNN soundbyte and as old as human conflict itself, with a climax that howls with the triumph of the primitive." - Loren D. Estleman, author of You Know Who Killed Me
This information about The House of Wolfe was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
James Carlos Blake is the author of twelve novels and numerous short stories. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and a recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He lives in Arizona.
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