New York book editor Richard Marder has no idea when he will die, but has a pressing reason to fixate on the timeline: an inoperable anomaly in his brain could burst at any time. Others in the same position might take early retirement, but Marder, a widower, has plans that will require him to draw strength from a side of himself he thought he had buried, to use skills he never expected to need again. Instead of going gently into that good night, Marder sets his affairs in order, buys a beach house in Playa Diamante in the state of Michoacán, Mexico, and bids goodbye to his old Vietnam buddy Patrick Skelly, keeping the details of his journey and destination as cryptic as possible.
As Marder expected, the secrecy proves irresistible to Skelly, who shows up unannounced at a rest stop in Virginia. Marder's plans will take him deep into areas of Mexico controlled by drug lords, and a man with Skelly's skills and somewhat warped moral code will come in handy. To Skelly, however, he maintains the pretense that he intends only to fulfill his wife's last wishes and scatter her ashes in her hometown.
Gruber knows how to hook readers. An appealing protagonist with a wild card sidekick, skillful pacing, smart one-liners and plenty of artillery tilt this thriller in the blockbuster-style direction, while also giving readers food for thought about relations between Mexico and the United States. This meaty but never maudlin thriller is smart, inventive, and sure to leave readers with pounding pulses and soaring imaginations. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, Latah County Library District; blogger at Infinite Reads