Iron River (Charlie Hood Novel)

by T. Jefferson Parker

Book Overview

On a dusty highway just north of the United States/Mexico border a man named Mike Finnegan is struck by a fast-moving vehicle and flung into the desert. Miraculously, he survives and winds up in a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451232429
• Release Date: January 2011
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.2" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Endured

While this author has an obvious talent for putting words together effortlessly, I remain unimpressed by this book's lack of anything close to a plot. His verbosity and descriptive nature (and my desire to finish what I started) is the only way I got to the end of this book.

Third Hood thriller explores US to Mexico gunrunning

In LA Sheriff's Deputy Charlie Hood's third adventure, set in the border town of Buenavista, Hood joins an ATF operation to stem gunrunning to Mexico. When a weapons-buy ends in the accidental death of a cartel leader's son, the bad guys take revenge, abducting and torturing the agent responsible. Naturally a rescue is in the offing. Meanwhile, a bankrupt arms dealer finds a way to get the family business going again by selling an ingenious untraceable gun - his design - to the cartels. Bradley Jones, son of bandit Allison Murrietta (from Hood's debut in L.A Outlaw) brokers the deal even as he enters training for the LA Sheriff's Department Explorers. Point of view switches among various characters, all but Ron Pace, the arms dealer, connected to Hood. The action is fast and furious but there's time for a budding romance for Hood and a 3-day wedding for Bradley Jones. Political tension simmers as government gets involved in the border raids and Parker shows how intractable and complicated the situation is in reality - on both sides of the border. Parker's prose is upbeat, even jaunty, but a dark, persistent thread runs through his stories. The characters are all likeable except for out and out villains, such as cartel leaders. But Pace is an engaging, lovesick young man and Jones is full of life and fun. There's a whiff of the mythical and mystical in these Hood novels too, from the legacy of the outlaw Joaquin Murrietta to the odd prescience of an accident victim who has the feel of a character fans readers will be seeing in future Hood adventures. This is a quirky, desert-steeped series that should appeal to fans of character-driven, politically themed thrillers.

His best yet

I am not sure why this book is getting less than adequate reviews. I thought it was brave and amazing. He is taking on the HUGE problem we have in the southwest with guns getting smuggled into Mexico. He is approaching good and evil and all shades between from different perspectives. His writing is flawless. Give this author a break people. Is an author not allowed to explore new territories? THIS is the basis for all kinds of art, to grow and explore and be the social antenna of a society which he has done with this book. I personally love the Charlie Hood series and hope he continues. I will not pigeon hole this author. He is too precious a writer for a reader to place boundaries upon. I call this a white-knuckled book and this book and its characters has haunted me ever since I finished it. Mr. Parker, if you are reading this, keep on keeping on. This is one reader you will never lose.

About As Good As It Gets

Parker, who has produced some fine work in the past, has with "Iron River" arrived at a prose style, and with insight to rival James Lee Burke. In other words, a masterpiece, as good as the genre gets.

Beware the Current

I'm new to T. Jefferson Parker. The book cover proclaims this to be part of a character series. Given that introduction, the novel far exceeded my admittedly uninformed expectations. The narrative focus is the traffic across the U.S./Mexican border: not the drugs and the undocumented workers moving North, but the guns and money moving South. Take the artificiality of the border out of the equation, and you have not just a criminal enterprise stretching - within this story's ambit - from the suburbs of Orange County to the forested valleys of the Sierra Madres, but sophisticated tactical warfare and outright terrorism eerily similar to that which plays out in the headlines that are drawn from the Middle East. The struggle is about money and power, but not just on a criminal scale. There's an intriguing hint of nation-building: the replacement of one system of corruption with perhaps another, more populist one. There's also more than a suggestion that much of the struggle feeds off the unhealthy appetites and excesses of America. But this also is a crime story, moving in two directions. On the one hand, our heroes are agents of the ATFE, set out to disrupt the arms traffic and to protect one of their own whose stray bullet has made him the target for vengeance by a narco-lord. On the other hand, the scion of a defunct arms-manufacturer sets out to rebuild his fortune and his future by crafting a deal that will help him rebound from a ruinous products liability judgment while aligning him with one of the most ruthless criminals on the planet. The stakes are high, and so is the tension. An interesting blend of characters is thrown into this mix. At the center is an introspective man of action trying to sort out the moral issues. He resembles the Hero: upright, grounded, conflicted. At the other pole is a mysterious man who knows more than he should about the action around him, and whose motivations remain unclear. He resembles the Coyote: wily, mysterious, somehow supernatural, with echoes of Melville's Confidence Man. The writing is deft and accomplished. The author knows where he wants his story to go, and he drives it there with purpose and style. This reader is left with the sense that he has stumbled upon not just a popular mystery series, but a chapter in a more profound, expanded work of fiction. The expectations will be much higher next time around.

Not Just A Great Mystery, But A Storied Explanation of Life in Our Times!

I've followed T. Jefferson Parker as an author for more than 20 years, and I've enjoyed his description of where I live during that whole time. He and I are of an age, and as an Orange County CA native who has now moved to northern San Diego county, he's described not only the physical settings of my life, but the events and situations that have provided the context of my choices in life. With the Charlie Hood character of these last 3 books, (L.A. Outlaws, Renegades, and now, Iron River) he's expanded the physical boundaries of his story, and brought a larger context to where we (not just me!) are today. This is a book that describes the circumstances of people who live in the United States with their often misunderstood southern neighbor, Mexico, and brings to life the headlines that today seem so unreal from "just over the border". He obviously brings voluminous research into the tale of the drug cartel's power and reach into all of America, and now, through the thrilling, adjacent story of guns, explains the carnage in our border cities, especially in Ciudad Juarez and in my local Tijuana. The story pushes a bit past reality, as stories usually do, but the distance he goes in describing a logical extreme by his book's events, is not too far from where we are right now. He doesn't preach solutions, but inserts a backdrop of U.S. and Mexican politics, gun laws, history, American obliviousness and entreprenuerial economics. The roles and choices that his characters take are told from their points of view, and leave the reader both exhausted from the exillerating ride and wiser about issues that I think we should take the time to ponder now. The book left me with an idea that small choices made individually, like his characters have made, will make a difference in the big world. I can't wait for the next book!