Borderline - Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block is eighty years old and has been writing, at a prodigious rate, for sixty of them. Borderline is one of his earliest, from 1958, when he was twenty. It is what Block himself describes as 'mid-century erotica' combined with a significant slice of crime noir.

The border in question is that between Mexico and the United States, which makes the theme alarmingly current in Trumpland America. However it is not about immigration or drug smuggling. It is about a rag-bag of disparate characters who end up in El Paso Texas and get their jollies south of the border in Juarez. We start with Marty, a professional gambler. Then we meet Meg, newly divorced from an under-sexed but rich husband. There's Lily, a teenage hooker on the lam who forms a lesbian double act with stripper Cassie. And finally there's Weaver, the anonymous loser who suddenly finds himself on the front page after murdering a girl. We know they are all going to come together somehow. The how is what keeps us reading. That and the precociously brilliant writing.

The book also operates on a deeper level. Each character is confronted with a personal or moral border which he or she can either cross or not. Marty is smitten with Meg - who wouldn't be? - but he takes her to see Cassie and Lily's floorshow and lets her persuade him to cross his line. Lily is unmoved by sex, presumably because she gets so much of it; she's just stringing her various lovers along until she can get a stash of cash together and dump them all. Weaver can keep his head down, maybe disappear into South America, or he can embrace his new calling and go out in a blaze of notoriety. Guess which he goes for?

I was hitherto only familiar with Block's middle years, chiefly in the Eighties and Nineties. He was still a brilliant writer - talent like his will never fade - but I don't remember huge amounts of sex. That's a pity because he is extraordinarily good at it. I can't remember reading anyone quite as good, though I admit I've never been a huge fan of literary porn. I'm definitely a fan of Block's porn.

I'm also a huge fan of these retro reissues from Hard Case Crime. The covers alone are irresistible. Quarry's Choice, which I reviewed here last year, is one of them, and I'm reading their e-book of one of Max Allan Collins's Nathan Heller series at the moment. They even do comics, for pity's sake! I'm doomed.

The Cartel - Don Winslow

The Cartel takes up where The Power of the Dog leaves off - it is the second, conclusive round of the lifetime, life-and-death duel to the death between the DEA's Art Keller and Adan Berrera, patron of the combined cartels of Mexico.


I loved The Power of the Dog when I read it earlier this year. The Cartel is just as good, perhaps slightly better. Happily, Winslow still resists the temptation of going the full Ellroy. His world is very dark, very treacherous, and astonishingly violent, but it remains none of the main participants is actually stark staring mad. That's the point - Adan is all about business; where would the Mexican economy be without him? There's a great passage on page 514 where he says:

After the crash [of 2008] the only source of liquidity was drug money. If they shut us down it would have taken the economy on the final plunge. They had to bail out General Motors, not us. And now? Think of the billions of dollars into real estate, stocks, start-up companies. Not to mention the millions of dollars generated fighting the 'war' [on drugs] - weapons manufacture, aircraft, surveillance. Prison construction. You think business is going to let that stop?

That's the beauty and the power of Winslow. He is so on-the-razor's edge current. I gather his latest novel, The Force, is going to propel him into the major league. Even before the book comes out, the TV version is in production. Don Winslow is already pretty big. Within a year he is going to be huge. I just hope he can stay current.

Writing this post, I think I have hit upon what makes The Cartel ever so slightly better than The Power of the Dog. It's the subplot about Pablo Mora, crime reporter on the local newspaer in Juarez, the frontline of the cartel war. Pablo is lazy, submissive, but he comes through in the end. Boy, does he come through. I can't offhand think of anything recent that has moved me so deeply as his last post. For many writers that would have been the whole story. Here it is just part of the mix. Other readers will be more stirred by other storylines. The point is, every reader will find something to treasure here.