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.