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.

Set on the Gulf of Mexico in a fictionalized version of Tampico, this crime novel sets out to display the total absence of a normal civil society in a city terrorized by drug cartels struggling for control. There is no way to not be involved -- every business must pay someone, every building gets built with dirty money, every police officer is in someone's pocket, no one can be trusted, and kidnapping is everyday business.

However, when the beautiful teenage daughter of one of the city's wealthiest men is kidnapped, he seeks advice from the American Consul General, who suggests hiring a police detective who left the force four years ago following a run-in with the corrupt Chief of Police. There are so many allusions to past events that I was sure that this book had to be the second in a series, but it doesn't appear to be.

And so, ex-cop Carlos Trevino does his best to investigate the case, with one of the rich man's bodyguards as a driver. It's a harrowing journey, as he flits around the city, dodging cartel men and his old boss's men, who are on the lookout for him. Then, when things seem to be headed for a resolution about halfway through the book, it drops him and switches protagonists. The second half of the book switches to the perspective of the corrupt Chief of Police, Margarito, who is also scrambling to survive as the cartels intensify their conflict and the political winds shift. It's a disorienting shift, from hero to villain, but an effective one.

By the end of it all, there's been a lot of killing, beating, and general violence, both to individuals, but more importantly, to civil society. It's a bleak portrait of Mexico under cartel terror, and not a book to read on vacation.