Thriller writer T. Jefferson Parker (at left) , a Southern California native, focuses on the gun suppliers on our border with Mexico for his new novel, Iron River. Los Angeles Times reporter Tim Rutten reviews it in the January 6 LAT books features.
And in today's San Diego Union,
Mater Dei student slain in Mexico
Teen gunned down in car near home
(If I hadn't sworn never to use the phrase “ripped from the headlines” this would be an appropriate place for it.)
Rutten writes: “Parker has said elsewhere that, because of its lax gun laws and indifference to their consequences south of the border, he considers the United States 'complicit' in Mexico's current agonies. 'Iron River' makes that point without a moment's descent into the didactic. This is gripping literary entertainment with a point.”
Mexican gun laws may also be partly responsible. The 1917 Constitution guarantees the right of Mexican citizens to own guns but subsequent amendments make it next to impossible for the average person - therefore, smuggling thrives.
The late author Gary Jennings (Aztec, and much more) once wrote to me in response to a fan letter that he had smuggled a rifle in for a farmer neighbor who wanted to shoot wolves and other predators which were killing his sheep.
No doubt I'll have more to say once I've read the book. Mexico, and my friends there from several years as an ex-pat, are never far from my heart and mind.
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