The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite
Wm Morrow, $25.99, 265 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-221688-5
A lot of folks in America don’t seem to be aware of it, or maybe they just don’t care since it’s not on their front stoop, but a war unlike any we’ve ever had is raging inside our nation. It’s called the War on Drugs . . . and we’re losing it. Certain parts of our cities are the scenes of daily urban combat between different gangs competing for drug territory. The focal point of the entire war however, is in the American southwest, along the California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas boarders. There, in small towns close to the Mexican border, law enforcement officials are under constant pressure and threat from the four major Mexican drug cartels who now have heavily armed armies of battle-hardened soldiers ready to do their bidding. It’s where we find ourselves in this week’s Mysterious Book Report.
The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite, picks up in New Mexico where Cormac McCarthy left off in Texas with No Country For Old Men.
In The Carrion Birds, Ray Lamar is a drug enforcer who’s been at it since his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident that also left his infant son with permanent brain damage and unable to speak. He’s been away from his home and family for ten long years. Now he wants to quit and return to the small southern New Mexico town he grew up in. He agrees to do one last, ‘easy’ job near his hometown for Memo, the drug lord he’s put all his army special operations training to work for. An easy job. Sure. Easy that is, until the killing starts. Killings that will put Ray in conflict with Tom, his closest friend, a man he grew up with, who’s like a brother, as well as Edna, the home town Sheriff with a three-man police force that’s outmanned and outgunned by the cartel, a few miles away in Mexico. This one is fast and furious, action-packed and relentless in it’s pacing and as bloody as anything William Shakespeare ever wrote. If you like action, adventure and criminals galore, pick up a copy today. You’ll soon see what life is like along our southern border. It’s scary as hell. You’ve been warned!
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