{"id":9119,"date":"2021-07-19T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9119"},"modified":"2021-07-18T16:12:13","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T20:12:13","slug":"kiss-the-detective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9119","title":{"rendered":"Kiss the Detective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This is the first book I\u2019ve read by \u00c9lmer Mendoza, who\u2019s thought of as \u201cthe godfather of narco-lit,\u201d translated from the Spanish by Mark Fried, and the third book in this series. Mendoza has a distinctive writing style, and I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s \u201clove it or hate it.\u201d Definitely, it takes a little getting used to, but well worth it to experience his compelling story and memorable, entertaining characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendoza, omits quotation marks, \u201che said\u201d and \u201cshe said\u201d some of the time, as well as paragraph changes when the speaker changes at other times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a few pages I got the hang of this, and for the most part, I could track the conversations pretty easily (artful writing and excellent translation!). Where I couldn\u2019t\u2014say, when two gangsters of fairly equal power are talking\u2014knowing for sure which one is speaking actually matters less than I thought it might. It\u2019s as if Mendoza submerges you in a river of dialog that sweeps you along through his intriguing plot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Operating in Culiac\u00e1n, Sinaloa, police homicide detective Edgar Mendieta is well acquainted with Samantha Vald\u00e9s, head of the Pacific Cartel. The story opens with an operation against Vald\u00e9s that offers enough firepower and double-dealing to conjure Don Winslow\u2019s The Border<\/a>. No time to wait for an ambulance, her crew drives her to the nearest hospital, where she\u2019s in intensive care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the cartel members keep their own watch, nervous Mexican army troops and federal police surround the hospital, waiting until she\u2019s well enough to travel, when they\u2019ll transport her to a military hospital in the capital. Word is, they\u2019re coming down on her hard. Still, perhaps the greatest immediate risk she faces is the professional assassin hired to finish her off. And Mendieta too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pacific Cartel fiasco technically belongs to the police department\u2019s narcotics unit. Mendieta has his hands full, anyway, with two unrelated murders: a snappily dressed young fortune-teller whose body was found with fifteen bullets in it; and a small-time crook killed clutching a woman\u2019s purse he\u2019d just snatched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendieta can\u2019t resist some hospital visits to see how Vald\u00e9s is faring and whether her people know anything about his two cases. In exchange for this information, he agrees to help smuggle her out of the hospital. There\u2019s no going back from this decision. His standing in the police is jeopardized, not to mention his safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A call from Mendieta\u2019s ex-wife in Los Angeles further raises the stakes. Their son Jason has apparently been kidnapped by an unknown party, no ransom demanded. Now not only are the Mexican authorities out to get him, he has to negotiate with the FBI as well. The spectre of betrayal lurks everywhere, as Mendieta is pushed into a tighter and tighter corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Mexico\u2019s President Obrador may have declared the war on drugs to be over, Mendieta sees the bodies that keep piling up. Yet, despite threats to his career, his family, and himself he keeps going, finding himself a new girlfriend, sharing beers with friends, holding his head up, a (mostly) honorable man in a dishonorable world. Whose side are you on, Edgar? At times the sides are hard to tell apart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book helpfully provides a list of the many characters, which I made good use of. If you give Mendoza\u2019s unusual approach to telling a story a chance, you may find his lively, honest writing refreshing, and Fried\u2019s translation reads beautifully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first book I\u2019ve read by \u00c9lmer Mendoza, who\u2019s thought of as \u201cthe godfather of narco-lit,\u201d translated from the Spanish by Mark Fried, and the third book in this series. Mendoza has a distinctive writing style, and I\u2019m … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Kiss the Detective -new from the godfather of narco-lit, a Sinaloa homicide detective chooses sides. Or does he?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,40,1749,632,126],"tags":[1184,1880,1881],"class_list":["post-9119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-international","category-police","category-reading-2","tag-drug-wars","tag-elmer-mendoza","tag-kiss-the-detective"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2n5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9121,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9119\/revisions\/9121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}