Book Review: The Mexico Run by Lionel White

May is 
No Place for Gringos 
Month !  

Book Review: 'The Mexico Run' by Lionel White

 4 / 5 Stars

 

Back in May of 2022, I featured 'May is no Place for Gringos' Month,' featuring reviews of four paperbacks that dealt with the misadventures of gringos who find themselves in strained circumstances, South of the Border. 

 

Cheerful, affirmational books that celebrated multiculturalism and diversity......... 

 

Here in May, 2026, I'd like to add a fifth paperback to the Month: 'The Mexico Run,' by Lionel White. It's an account of a gringo doing clandestine things down in May-hee-co........things that are a little peligroso, shall we say ? 

 

'The Mexico Run' first was published in 1974 by Fawcett; copies of that original paperback are costly. Luckily, in October 2022, Stark House Press reissued the novel as a trade paperback, as part of a twin publication with another White novel, 'Jailbreak.' 

 

White (1905 - 1985) was a crime reporter, and the author of over 35 crime and suspense novels issued between 1952 to 1978. In his introduction to 'The Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction,' his 1987 anthology of postwar noir stories, Ed Gorman recalls seeing White's Gold Medal paperback, 'Death Takes the Bus,' and its transformative impact: 

The cover, designed by the masterful Michael Hooks, depicted one of his wild but forlorn red-heads submissive at the feet of a hood with a .45 in his hand....The title was in yellow, as was the medallion in the upper right hand that would virtually change my life. 

Gold Medal book number 663 was DEATH TAKES THE BUS by Lionel White.

That was my first Gold Medal book.

So: on to 'The Mexico Run.' It's set in the late 1960s - early 1970s, and features a Vietnam war veteran named Mark Johns as the protagonist. Johns has a scheme to import Acapulco Gold, a potent strain of Cannabis sativa, into the USA from Mexico. As schemes go, it's complicated, one that requires trusting far too many untrustworthy parties, but Johns, confident of a big payoff, is willing to take risks. It's also the case that Johns isn't very bright [the reader is given to understand that Johns's time in Vietnam has imparted a degree of fatalism to his psychology.]

With information imparted by a Vietnam colleague named 'Bongo,' Johns works some connections in the San Francisco area and finds himself a buyer. With the USA end of the op cemented, Johns next heads South of the Border to Tijuana. En route he intervenes on behalf of a lubricious hippie chick named Sharon, who is blonde, attractive, in trouble, and in need of rescue. 

As Johns discovers, Sharon is good in bed, but also a magnet for attention from swarthy Mexicanos. One such Mexicano is Captain Hernando Morales, Johns's Tijuana connection and the sort of man who makes everyday, corrupt federales look like choirboys:

There's an old saying that all jails are alike and all cops are alike. This is not true. Jails in the United States are tough, often brutal. But compared to Mexican jails, they're country clubs. A certain number of police officers in the United States are vicious, cruel, and often sadistic. Sometimes they ignore the law as often as they enforce it. Compared to Mexican police, however, they are courteous, considerate, and kind; gentlemen of the old school. 

Johns understands that Captain Morales is a muy mal hombre, but Morales has the necessary introductions to the proper people, including some Acapulco Gold growers, and the smuggling operation gets off to a reasonably good start. Flush with cash from his first Run, Johns returns to the Ensenada area, intent on stepping up the volume of his buys. But that's when things start to go wrong......very, very wrong........and Johns learns that Mexico indeed, is No Place for Gringos..........

'The Mexico Run' is a well-written crime novel, with a narrative sparked with episodes of nasty violence, violence with a Special Sauce derived from South of the Border malevolence. The climax of the novel is suspenseful, as Johns is obligated to make a run to a destination north of the border, a run where the slightest error can have lethal consequences.

The only weak segment of 'The Mexico Run' is in the final several pages, where some revelations are trotted out, revelations that seemed to me to be more than a little contrived.

When all is said and done, 'The Mexico Run' is another valid entry in those treatments of the perils going South of the Border holds for gringos, and it deserves a Four Star Rating.