The Hot Country
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4.3 • 11 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A US war correspondent is plunged into the Mexican civil war in “a whip-smart tale of intrigue and espionage” by the Pulitzer Prize winner (CNN.com).
Undaunted by enemy territory and sweltering heat, American journalist Christopher “Kit” Marlowe Cobb has arrived in Mexico in the spring of 1914. The country is rocked by civil war, the American invasion of Vera Cruz, and the controversial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal (The Jackal).
Marlowe thinks he’s found his first big headline in the attempted assassination of a priest—the bullet miraculously rebounding off the holy man’s cross. Employing a young pickpocket to help him identify the sniper, Cobb is soon led into a far more dangerous story: German officials, with ammunition ships docked in the port, are showing up in the city. When Cobb falls for a young Mexican laundress, he believes he’s found a soft respite from hard news. If only she were as innocent as she seems.
A sweeping saga of espionage, action, and romance set at the dawn of World War I, Robert Olen Butler kick-starts his rousing series with “a thinking person’s thriller, the kind of exotic adventure that, in better days, would have been filmed by Sam Peckinpah” (TheWashington Post).
“Pancho Villa, fiery senoritas, and Germans up to no good—Robert Olen Butler is having fun . . . and readers will too.” —Joseph Kanon, New York Times–bestselling author of The Good German
“[A] high-spirited adventure.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Going off to war with Kit Cobb is as bracing and fun as it used to be in George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books, or in Perez-Reverte’s Captain Alatriste novels.” —Dan Fesperman, Hammett Prize–winning author of The Double Game
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulitzer Prize winner Butler's ambitious first crime novel introduces Christopher Marlowe "Kit" Cobb, an American war correspondent who has come to Vera Cruz, Mexico, in 1914 to cover the country's civil war. A passionate believer in the power of a free press and the moral superiority of the United States, Kit is no mere observer. He assumes a false identity to pursue German diplomat Friedrich von Mensinger en route to a meeting with revolutionary leader Pancho Villa, and the correspondent soon finds himself up to his neck in political intrigue. The large cast includes laundress Luisa Morales, a pretty se orita with whom Kit becomes romantically involved; Gerhard Vogel, an American-born German soldier; and a resourceful pickpocket, Diego, who acts as Kit's eyes and ears. A fine stylist, Butler (A Small Hotel) renders the time and place in perfect detail, though readers should be prepared for a sluggish plot that lingers over the minutiae of the political machinations.
