5 gripping but heartbreaking stars to Don’t Send Flowers! 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

It hurt my heart to read this book because it was a solid reminder of life in some parts of Mexico today. What you should know is that my best friend of over 25 years has dual citizenship in Mexico and the United States. I was fortunate to travel with her family there, completely immersed in the language and culture. I never felt unsafe, and I never would have expected to feel that way. On a fundamental level, it is heartbreaking to witness what is occurring in such a beautifully cultured country. The status of Mexico is not a political issue for me. It is a deeply personal one.

Martin Solares is a skilled writer. He immediately brought the main character, Carlos Trevino, to life. Trevino is a retired police detective who left the force because of all the corruption and violence he faced on a daily basis. He is going to confront it all again when he is hired to find a well-to-do family’s kidnapped daughter. Unfortunately, what happened to the daughter is common in that region of Mexico.

As Trevino tracks the the young woman, he is also attempting to avoid the chief of police who is morally corrupt and working alongside the cartels.

Solares’ narrative is gritty, haunting, and even brutal at times, while also original and vitally important. This is not an easy read, but it felt like a realistic and honest portrayal. The tension building feels so exciting until you remember that, while the main character is fictional, the status of safety in parts of Mexico is not. Kudos to Solares for this masterful depiction.

Thank you to Grove Press for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

My reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com

I was eager to read this book when I stumbled across it on Goodreads. Solares’ The Black Minutes was one of my favorite reads from a few years ago. The first third of this book is a bit rocky with the writing being very uneven. I chalked it up to a bad translation, but the book suddenly kicks into high gear and the uneven writing completely disappeared. I wonder if it was actually some sort of stylistic choice?

At any rate, this was a very good crime novel set in Mexico. I found this to be a much more engaging and sympathetic novel than those by American writers covering the same territory (Don Winslow for one, who comes off as preachy and a blowhard). Solares really deserves to be discovered by a wider audience: nuanced crime novels with some interesting narrative structures. Good stuff.

This is gritty, raw Mexican noir with a violent, bloody plot and hideous, corrupt, immoral characters. And it is very well done.

The teenage daughter of a rich businessman is kidnapped and ex-detective Carlos Trevino is hired to find her. He scours the backstreets of the fictional coastal resort of La Eternidad, a town caught in the middle of a bloody territorial war between two drug cartels.

Alongside Trevino's search is the story of Police Chief Margarito, a man whose decades of corrupt, murderous rule are about to come to an end, by either retirement or the payback of those he has wronged - whichever comes first.

As in James Ellroy's best work, Solares has created a world filled to the brim with awful people in a town where everyone is on the take and bodies are dropped at an alarming rate. He doesn't quite have the panache of Ellroy, nor the cinematic quality of Don Winslow, but his storytelling is hardboiled and moves at a thrilling pace. A cracking slice of seedy Mexican noir.

Wróciłam do niej po długiej przerwie i kurwa gdyby ona się skończyła w połowie a nie była na siłę wydłużana była by to spoko książka, a tak od połowy czułam się jakbym czytała coś innego, coś na co totalnie nie miałam ochoty, chciałam wrócić do poprzedniego bohatera a nie czytać a kimś kto mnie średnio obchodzi.

This was an incredible audiobook. It took me a few goes to get past the first hour because the Spanish names were all so unfamiliar, but once I got going it drew me right in. The editing was tight, the translation superb, the pacing just right and a superb plot. Highly recommended.

Don’t Send Flowers by Martin Solares is a 2018 Grove Press publication.

There aren’t many crime dramas, one can recommend by saying ‘this is an important book’ or a ‘must read’, to anyone other than to those who typically read books within that category. However, this book might be the exception.

For those who are fed up with implausible plot lines, constantly craving realism in your fiction, you will have met your match with this novel. While it makes for a great work of fiction, unfortunately it is all too plausible, and all too realistic. It will certainly put things in perspective.

When the sheltered girl of a wealthy man is taken hostage, a former detective, Carlos Treviño, is hired to find her, while attempting to fly under the radar of Commander Margarito Gonzalez, the corrupt chief of police.

Sometimes an overused word is still the only one that will adequately describe something. In this case, I can’t think of a more apt word than 'gritty'. This is a vivid, very depressing look at Mexico, and what has become of it. Crime dramas that utilize a current situation as a basis for a story often makes one wonder if the story was, at least in part, based on fact.

This is well developed, raw, intricately detailed crime thriller, packed with stunning twists, and edge of your seat suspense. This book has been accurately labeled as 'noir', a personal favorite of mine, which does help to offset some of the grit, giving the story a bit of polish, smoothing out some of the rough edges.

The novel is taut and edgy, perfectly paced, with such well-drawn characterizations, it was like I was actually there watching these horrible and strange events unfold in real time.

I do wish this book would see more coverage, gaining enough momentum to cross over into the mainstream consciousness. This novel is not just a strong crime drama, a well written piece of noir fiction, but is also a searing portrait of the current situation in Mexico. Reading this novel, even if one is not exactly a huge fan of crime thrillers would assuredly raise awareness of Mexico’s plight.

This story is so intimate, it gives readers an up close and personal look at how drug lords rule over law enforcement and politicians in a way news reports could never convey. Yes, it is fiction, but it’s the most realistic and one of the most unforgettable crime novels I’ve read in a long time.

5 stars

I found this book needlessly repetitive and overwritten, with scene after scene of horrible events past and present and depressingly suicidal views of life in northern Mexico. At some point, you start empathizing with the life choices of the brutalized citizenry, who leave in droves or lock themselves in their houses, and lose patience with the protagonist and the "victims" he's "helping". The pace is frantic, but the plot moves very slowly. And you just know there's so much more awful stuff to come! I didn't finish, got half way through and abandoned it. Also, I found the translation often quaint in its use of American slang to translate the Spanish slang. The translator would have been better off to just leave the Spanish and provide a nice glossary. Finally, I found some of the characters performing roles that seemed unlikely, like the American consul character, who seemed to have outsize influence for his lowly job. I kept hoping for a revelation that he was CIA or something, but it just goes on and on with him providing all the important connections that the detective needs, without any explanation of why or how he has so much influence.

Woof, disappointing. I love noir. This should have been in my wheelhouse. But way too many examples of deeply unconvincing exposition dumps from the mouths of characters.

Great topic, promising setup, but did not work for me. (Read about 20%.)