Christopher Marlowe ("Kit") Cobb, an early 20th-century American war correspondent reporting on Mexico's civil war, witnesses the attempted assassination of a priest and the arrival of strange ships bearing German officials. - (Baker & Taylor)
While covering the Mexican civil war, a newspaper correspondent, Kit, falls in love with a young laundress and enlists the help of a pickpocket to determine who shot a priest in this crime-fiction debut from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Hell. - (Baker & Taylor)While covering the Mexican civil war in the spring of 1914, a newspaper correspondent, Kit, falls in love with a young laundress and enlists the help of a pickpocket to determine who attempted to shoot a priest. - (Baker & Taylor)
In The Hot Country, Christopher Marlowe Cobb (“Kit”), the swashbuckling early 20th century American newspaper war correspondent travels to Mexico in April and May of 1914, during that country’s civil war, the American invasion of Vera Cruz and the controversial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal (The Jackal). Covering the war in enemy territory and sweltering heat, Cobb falls in love with Luisa, a young Mexican laundress, who is not as innocent as she seems.
The intrepid war reporter soon witnesses a priest being shot. The bullet rebounds on the cross the holly man wears around his neck and leaves him unharmed. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to help him find out the identity of the sniper and, more importantly, why important German officials are coming into the city in the middle of the night from ammunition ships docked in the port.
An exciting tale of intrigue and espionage, Butler’s powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed.
- (Perseus Publishing)In The Hot Country, Christopher Marlowe Cobb (?Kit”), the swashbuckling early 20th century American newspaper war correspondent travels to Mexico in April and May of 1914, during that country’s civil war, the American invasion of Vera Cruz and the controversial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal (The Jackal). Covering the war in enemy territory and sweltering heat, Cobb falls in love with Luisa, a young Mexican laundress, who is not as innocent as she seems.
The intrepid war reporter soon witnesses a priest being shot. The bullet rebounds on the cross the holly man wears around his neck and leaves him unharmed. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to help him find out the identity of the sniper and, more importantly, why important German officials are coming into the city in the middle of the night from ammunition ships docked in the port.
An exciting tale of intrigue and espionage, Butler’s powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed.
- (Perseus Publishing)
Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of twelve novels, six story collections, and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. A recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.
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Perseus Publishing)
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Butler takes his first crack at crime fiction with this stylish historical thriller set in civil war–torn Mexico in 1914. Christopher Marlowe Cobb (call him "Kit") is a newspaper war correspondent in search of action, so naturally he winds up in Vera Cruz just as the American navy is staging a very peculiar mini-invasion. Kit would like to get to the bottom of that, and he would also like to score an interview with Pancho Villa. Then there's the matter of the Mexican woman who may be a laundress but may also be something very different—and with whom Kit has very definitely fallen in love. And let's not forget the German entourage: What are they doing in Vera Cruz? Along the way to answering all those questions, Kit gets more directly involved in the fighting than he'd planned. (And so do we: Butler's multipage, one-sentence description of a gun battle between Villa's troops and the Federales is a virtuoso feat of breathless, high-energy descriptive prose.) The plot of this multistranded thriller is at times difficult to follow, but the character studies, sense of place, and mood are utterly gripping. The hard-bitten war correspondent is a staple of the thriller genre, of course, but Butler brings new depth and flair to the familiar figure; only Fowler in Graham Greene's The Quiet American (1956) or perhaps Russell Cruz-Price, Kent Harrington's dissolute journalist in Red Jungle (2005), comes close to Kit Marlowe for that irresistible mix of been-there-twice-seen-this-shit-before cynicism and its polar opposite, an unquenchable desire to see if the next card turned just might be something special. Reviewers feel that way, too, sometimes, but the card this book turns is definitely something special. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
