The third Saxon novel finds the actor-cum-PI going to Tijuana
to retrieve the missing daughter of a coked-up Hollywood
director with more money than he knows what to do with.
Merissa Evering runs off to Mexico with a sleazewad
immigration lawyer named Martin Swanner. Swanner leaves a
trail of pissed-off people everywhere he goes, especially in
Tijauna, where Saxon finds him dead. He also finds himself a
guest of the local constabulary, who have decidedly
un-American views on Miranda and police brutality. Never the
less, Saxon gets out and finds himself tangling with a local
gang lord and a petulant young bullfighter. His fruitless
search for Merissa leads him to an affair with the
irresistable Carmen and into a web of illegal immigrant
smuggling and the worst Tijuana has to offer. Between this
and Kent Harrington's DIA DE LOS MUERTOS, I have pretty much
crossed TJ off my list of places to visit.
This has got to be the most cynical Les Roberts novel I've
read to date. In the opening chapters, he constantly slams
and zings the Hollywood system and culture. With a copyright
date of 1989, it's pretty clear this was during his
transition from Los Angeles to Cleveland, where he became
better known for the Milan Jacovich series. And I'm pretty
sure Milan would have held his own much better in TJ than
Saxon. But then Jacovich is a Vietnam vet, an ex-cop, and a
long time PI. Saxon is an actor using the PI gig to support
his acting habit. Naturally, he's going to be a little less
durable - and Roberts certainly beats the snot out of him in
this one - and a lot more vain than his Slovenian rust belt
counterpart. He frets about his waistline and his looks as
he's beaten, shot at, and starved.
The story offers a solid plot, with the Carmen subplot
sounding a little off until the very end, when Roberts ties
up her role rather nicely. His picture of Tijuana as hell on
Earth is what drives this story, the sheer stink of
desperation of the place, crushing poverty and squalid
conditions. I asked someone who'd been there this weekend if
it was really that bad. She read Harrington's book and said,
"Yes. It's that bad."
Along with DIA, which was written some 12 years later (?
Someone know when that was originally released?), CARROT also
conjured up images from THE SUN ALSO RISES. Instead of Spain,
though, the bullfights take place in TJ, and the difference
between clean, rich Madrid and depressed Tijuana are
striking. Sometimes, during the bullfight sections, Roberts
even lapses into Hemingway's style, though not with glaringly
obvious riffs on the minimalist gems like "He went to the
river. The river was there." More like the run-on
descriptions that pepper SUN. If you read SUN, it really
conjures up the idea of someone from that book slumming it in
Baja.
The is the best of the three Saxon books I've read so far,
and the darkest book by Roberts I've read to date. (Mind you,
there are some later Jacovich's I haven't gotten to.)
Jim Winter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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