Book Review: In the Forest of the Night

 May is No Place for Gringos Month !

Book Review: 'In the Forest of the Night' by Ron Faust

5 / 5 Stars

'In the Forest of the Night' first was published in 1993. This paperback edition (326 pp.) was published by Tor Books in April, 1994, and features cover art by Richard Andri.

Ron Faust (b. 1936) has published 15 novels between 1974 and 2013. Some of these feature the investigator 'Dan Shaw', and many are set in the southern US, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. 'Nowhere to Run' (1981) is the story of an American drifter who finds himself accused of murder while eking out a living in a Mexican resort town, and thus belongs to the 'No Place for Gringos' sensibility.

'In the Forest of the Night' is set in the early 1990s in an un-named Central American country. There is a civil war waging between the authoritarian government and a coalition of Marxist rebels. The American physician Martin Springer has gone South of the Border in order to minister to the medical needs of the rural population. However, this act of virtue is disregarded by the Marxistas, who decide to capture and execute him, allegedly for witnessing something the Marxistas would prefer be kept concealed. 

As the novel opens, Springer is imprisoned in the bell tower of the Church of San Pedro de los Martires church in the impoverished town of Tepazatlan.......certainly no situation any gringo wants to be in. The time of his execution ? Well, próximamente, of course:

The morning was bright, none had ever been more purely brilliant, and yet Martin had difficulty seeing. It was like looking through another's eyeglasses, clear on the periphery but blurred in the center.........

A dog limped around the corner of the tower, a yellowish bitch nearly bald with mange. Its ribs and vertebrae were outlined against the skin. It halted and stood splay-legged for a moment, staring, and then, lowering its head and tail, slunk back around the tower.

Springer's wife, a beautiful blue-eyed blonde woman named Katherine, travels to the capital city in the hopes of arranging for her husband's release. She meets a dissipated American reporter named Dix, and a U.S. embassy staffer named Harley, who are not optimistic about her chances. And then there is Senor Jorge Cabeza de Vaca, '.....some sort of policeman, and very powerful in the government.' Transfixed with the thought of a mujer rubia as a supplicant for his graces, Senor Cabeza de Vaca assures Katherine he can free her husband. Soon. Very soon. Manana, in fact ! 

What a naive Katherine Springer doesn't realize is that South of the Border, the laws and proprieties observed in the United States do not apply. And Senor Cabeza de Vaca never grants favors without wanting something in return...........

I'm not giving away any spoilers to say that Martin Springer manages to evade death at the hands of the Marxistas. But that is hardly the end of his troubles, for he and his wife are going to discover that Central America is indeed No Place for Gringos...........

'Forest' is an entertaining thriller. The author uses a spare, declarative prose style in his depictions of the environs of the cities and countrysides where the story unfolds, and the actions of his large cast of characters. His dialogue passages are terse and to the point. As well, the political pontifications that occupy so much of another 'Central America is a Gringo Hell' novel, David Linsey's 'Body of Truth', are absent in 'Forest'; Faust does provide political observations, but these are infrequent, and couched with irony rather than tumid indignation.

The only fault I found in the narrative was that the advancement of the plot too regularly relied on rather stupid decision-making on the part of the lead characters. But maybe gringos get in trouble South of Border precisely because they are estupido.........?! 

'Forest' features a motif not frequently found in gringo dramas: humor, this in the form of the boisterous colonel Felipe Fuerte, a rebel officer whose loyalty revolves around monetary rewards, rather than ideological fulfillment. Fuerte, as Martin Springer will discover, is a good man to have on your side when adversity presents itself.

The verdict ? 'In the Forest of the Night' is the best of the No Place for Gringos novels that I have read. It provides a believable portrait of what it is to be isolated and helpless in a country where caudillos hold power, and their slightest order must be obeyed. The closing chapters are genuinely suspenseful, all the more so because Faust never tips his hand as to the outcome. This is a book worth searching out.

The Civil War Between the Negroes and the Jews

'The Civil War Between the Negroes and the Jews !'

by John Hughes (story) and George Evans (art)

from National Lampoon, January 1980

Ahhh, yes......if you are a contemporary reader, then this comic from National Lampoon is either gravely offensive, or very funny, depending on your point of view. But back at the beginning of 1980, it was simply 'humorous'.......

Before he became famous for directing films such as National Lampoon's Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Home Alone, Hughes (1950 - 2009) was a prolific contributor to the magazine. 

Artist George Evans (1920 - 2001) worked for EC comics, Classics Illustrated, and both Marvel and DC as well as the Lampoon.

Success by John Workman

'Success' by John Workman

from Wild Things (Metro Comics, 1986)

Book Review: Incident at La Junta

 May is No Place for Gringos Month !

Book Review: 'Incident at La Junta' by Oliver Lange 

2 / 5 Stars

'Incident at La Junta' (208 pp.) was published by Pocket Books in June, 1974, with a cover illustration by Hector Garrido. 

Oliver Lange (1927 - 2013) was the pseudonym of the U.S. author John Warren Wadleigh, who wrote a number of thrillers over the interval from 1958 to 1989. His 1971 novel 'Vandenberg' may have been an inspiration for the 1984 film Red Dawn, about resistance to a Soviet invasion of the U.S. Although Lange apparently never lived in Mexico, he did live for a time in a remote area of New Mexico.

'Incident at La Junta' is set in rural Mexico in the early 1970s (La Junta is a real village, located in the Municipality of Guerrero in the State of Chihuahua). Two Young Americans, Keith and Jocelyn, are driving a Volkswagen van around South of the Border in a somewhat haphazard effort to avoid interrogation at the hands of the FBI. It seems that despite their wholesome, Southern California appearances, Keith and Jocelyn have been involved in Weathermen- style domestic terrorism, mainly as an excuse for something wild and groovy to do. With the law closing in, they decide it's best to load up on firearms and traveler's checks, and relocate someplace where the FBI isn't likely to follow.

Once in La Junta things take a turn for the worse for our duo. The chief of police, the corpulent Chief Jimenez, is very much the law of the land and disinclined to observe Americano niceties such as Civil Rights and Due Process. And while Dr. Montenegro is a friendly enough man, with an advanced education and a fluency in English, he increasingly is worried about the advent of a febrile illness among the campesinos in the countryside. Worried enough to demand that a quarantine be imposed on La Junta and its environs. 

As Keith and Jocelyn are about to discover, La Junta during a disease outbreak definitely is No Place for Gringos..........

'Incident at La Junta' was a disappointment. While the cover blurbs would lead the reader to believe it's a thriller, in actuality it's a South of the Border treatment of the Camus novel 'The Plague'. This is unfortunate, since the novel's premise would have made for an engaging exploration of Mexican noir, generating a novel that could perhaps have been a predecessor to Kem Nunn's 2004 novel 'Tijuana Straits'. 

 Author Lange too-quickly abandons the book's fugitives-out-of-their-depth storyline to adopt a leisurely, meandering exploration of the effects of the epidemic and its quarantine on the inhabitants of La Junta. 

Jocelyn, in particular, becomes the novel's focus. The reader is made to understand, in labored fashion, that she is an exemplar of the self-absorbed, self-indulgent way of life Americans have come to expect as a natural state of being (indeed, at one point in the novel Jocelyn hums the New Seekers I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, which in 1971 came to be an advertisement for Coca-Cola, to herself). 

Much contrasting is made between the earthy realism with which the Mexicanos live their lives amid the poverty and insularity of their village, and the casual ignorance that marks the behavior of the American protagonists as they blunder  their way through a country they are ill-equipped to understand.

The bulk of the narrative is given to internal monologues and philosophical conversations, which soon become tedious. It doesn't help matters that Lange imposes of some stilted, inane prose on his readers:

"'Cause Mananaland's a veritable sportsman's paradise ! It says so in all the tour books," Keith said. "After all, Jocey, I shot my first Canadian goose when I was eight."

"God save my soul," Jocelyn said drearily. "I've got a freaking sportsman on my hands." She sneered at him. "Blasting little chippies. What's in it ?"

"Thrill of the hunt. Pukka sahib ! A Jungian to my caveman heritage", Keith said agreeably. "It turns you off ?"

"It do indeed."

"Why, there was a time, Jocey, when you would have done in half the country if you'd had the chance. But popping off a lil' bitsy bird - "

"Not on your life", she maintained.

By the time I got to the closing chapters of 'Incident' I was simply trying to finish the book. There is something of a 'shock' denouement, but at that point in my journey through the pages of 'Incident' I didn't really care.

Summing up, those interested in an existential presentation of rural Mexico, featuring a cast of idiosyncratic characters, may find 'Incident at La Junta' rewarding, but I suspect everyone else can avoid this novel without penalty.

In Midlothian

In Midlothian

So I drove about 90 minutes to a used bookstore in Midlothian, Virginia, a western suburb of Richmond. I hadn't been there in about two years. I was astonished at all the development going on and how jammed traffic was, in the afternoon on a weekday, no less. 

I picked up a pretty good selection of paperbacks.

A new Qdoba restaurant has opened in the area (photo below) and I was determine to stop in. I last patronized the chain ten years ago (!), at a restaurant in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines. I would drive down to Clive from my home in Ames to go to the Half-Price Books store in Clive, and for lunch, I'd stop in at a nearby Qdoba. 

The Midlothian Qdoba served the food as I remembered it. Kind of like Chipotle. It was good. 

All in all, a nice way to spend a humid, rainy Spring day.........

Match Point of Our Love

'Match Point of Our Love'

The Beach Boys, 1978

The Beach Boys' album M.I.U. was released in September, 1978. It is not considered one of their best albums. Mike Love, who had positioned himself as the leader of the band, insisted on recording it in a small town in Iowa on the campus of the Maharishi International University. 

Dennis and Carl Wilson were barely involved in the recording process, and Brian Wilson was in poor health; he later would claim he didn't remember making the album.

That said, at least one track on the album, 'Match Point of Our Love', stands the test of time as a catchy, AM radio-friendly song. Brian Wilson wrote the song (which features lyrics dedicated to tennis themes), and provided lead vocals. It's worth a listen..........

Book Review: Body of Truth

May is No Place for Gringos Month !

Book Review: 'Body of Truth' by David Lindsey

4 / 5 Stars

'Body of Truth' (465 pp.) first was published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1993. This Bantam Books paperback edition was issued in April, 1993, with cover art by Jim Lebadd.

David Lindsey (b. 1944) began publishing the first of his 14 novels in 1983, most of these, like 'Body of Truth', are entries in the series featuring the Houston Police Department detective Stuart Haydon. Two of Lindsey's novels, 'Mercy' and 'The Color of Night', were made into films.

'Body of Truth' is set in Guatemala in the early 1990s. As it opens, Haydon is assigned to investigate a missing person, one Lena Muller, a co-ed and the daughter of a wealthy, and politically influential, Houston couple. It seems Lena Muller had been working as a Peace Corps member in rural Guatemala, and in so doing, had become involved in some kind of 'trouble'. 

Being fluent in Spanish, and having worked South of the Border on previous cases, Haydon flies down to Guatemala City and begins his inquiries both among the dissipated American expatriate community, and the American embassy staff. As his investigation proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that Lena Muller had taken notice of some clandestine activities involving people in positions of power in the Guatemalan government. And those people are not kindly disposed to foreigners intruding into their business. 

As Stuart Haydon is about to find out, Guatemala in the midst of a brutal war against Marxist insurgents definitely is No Place for Gringos........

It's not easy to compose a crime novel that holds one's interest through all of its 465 pages, but to his credit, author Lindsey keeps the narrative from getting too static by leavening 'Body of Truth' with red herrings, some sharply rendered episodes of mayhem, and more than a few double-crosses (and double-double-crosses). Through the experiences of the cynical but dogged detective Haydon, the reader is brought to awareness of how duplicity and mendacity are part and parcel of the fabric of life in Guatemala.

However, 'Body' suffers from being overwritten. Too many descriptive passages take attention away from the plot; for example, at one point early in the novel, the author devotes half a page to documenting the ravages a January freeze has inflicted on the vegetation in Haydon's backyard. Then there are the soulful soliloquies (such as a parable about cicadas and starving children), uttered in a kind of poetic Spanish-translated-into-English, that one of the Guatemalan characters periodically launches into. These are intended to impart a depth to the storyline that presumably elevates 'Body of Truth' above the conventions of most crime or thriller novels. But I found these soliloquies to be stilted and unconvincing.

Then there are constant pontifications from the author that are intended to remind the reader of the immorality both of the Guatemalan regime, and the U.S. (for maintaining said government): 

One of the reasons why the Guatemalan army and the right-wing death squads had gotten away with their massacres and assassinations as long as they had was because Guatemala itself had always avoided major international attention.  

***

His was the story of Guatemala.........But sufrimiento was everywhere. Ugliness survived where beauty perished. The fact was that the land of eternal spring had vanished, and the land of eternal suffering had taken its place. 

***

On the other side of the plaza, to their left, the Palacio Nacional glowered biliously, a three story farrago of classic and colonial architectural motifs of light green stone........The sight of it angered and frustrated and frightened hundreds of thousands, even millions of the people it was supposedly there to serve.

These expressions of righteous indignation quickly become tedious.

The closing chapters of 'Body of Lies' maintain a leisurely pacing, obliging the reader to endure intricate descriptions of motoring on the Guatemalan highway system, and traversing the narrow roads of villages and rural locales. However, the novel's denouement avoids contrivance, while delivering some additional plot twists.

The verdict ? 'Body of Lies' succeeds as a 'No Place for Gringos' novel. Its length requires rather more investment from the reader than other entries in the genre, such as Ron Faust's 'In the Forest of the Night' (which also I'm reviewing), but provides an convincing picture of a country at a particularly fraught time and place in its history. As such, it deserves four stars.

War Games by B. K. Taylor

War Games

by B. K. Taylor

from the May, 1982 issue of Heavy Metal

B. K. 'Bob' Taylor was a regular contributor, with his strips 'The Appletons' and 'Timberland Tales', to the National Lampoon during the 70s and 80s. 

This comic was a foray into the Lampoon's sister magazine, Heavy Metal, and gently but accurately satirizes the fantasy gaming community as it was, way back in '82...........

Book Review: Poso del Mundo

May is No Place for Gringos Month !

Book Review: 'Poso del Mundo' by Ovid Demaris

3 / 5 Stars

Accompanied by the Consulate's protective officer, I visited the Tijuana jail.....the first thing to assault the senses is the odor, so overpoweringly noxious that one fears it will leave a stain on his clothing. It is not only the putrescence of human waste, of sewage and gases, but a reeking blend of this and ages of decomposition, the decay of people and buildings, of mold and sweat and rust and fear and rot, a marasmus of steel and concrete, bringing forth a mephitic growth with a life of its own.

'Poso del Mundo' (180 pp.) first was published by Little, Brown in Hardcover in 1970; this Pocket Books paperback edition was published in July, 1971.

Ovid Demaris (1919 – 1998) was a United Press correspondent and reporter who, during the 1970s and 1980s, wrote 14 nonfiction books, mostly on organized crime and the Mafia. 'The Last Mafioso', Demaris's 1980 account of the life and times of mobster Jimmy 'The Weasel' Frattiano, was a bestseller (in a March, 1981 article in the New York Times, Demaris stated: ''I'm making more money out of the mob than they're making''). 

Demaris's 1970 book 'America the Violent' is a very readable, if depressing, historical overview of violence in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Demaris also wrote a large number of novels in the thriller and crime genres, including ‘The Lusting Drive’ (1958) and ‘The Extortioners’ (1960) for Fawcett's Gold Medal imprint. He wrote a series of books featuring the private detective Vince Slader. Many of these have been reissued as paperbacks and e-Books.

'Poso del Mundo', which loosely translates into 'Asshole of the World',  is something of a mix of investigative reporting and travel narrative. It's based on a tour Demaris made in the late 60s of the Mexican cities ('from Tijuana to Matamoros') adjoining the U.S. - Mexico border region.

At the best mancebia in Piedras Negras (it was bursting at the seams with ripsnorting Tejanos), I watched a floor show while cockroaches literally rained down on the table. After a while, convinced they were racing up my legs, I began stamping my feet to shake them loose and was congratulated by a table of ripsnorters for my enthusiasm.

The book's chapters examine brothels ('Cyprian Supermarkets'), the history of Tijuana ('Al Otro Lado'), Mexican police and prisons ('La Chicharra and the Little Monkey'), bribery as a way of life ('The Politics of Mordida'), cross-border smuggling ('El Contrabando', 'The Economics of Narcotics'), American gangsters at work and play in Tijuana ('Senor Tijuana is Gringo') and the futility of hoping or expecting that Mexico will change ('La Reforma Ultima').

Demaris of course realizes his Anglophone readers want things lurid and appalling, and for the most part, 'Poso del Mundo' obliges. The chapter on Mexican prisons and the hapless gringos incarcerated in them surely would have exerted a sobering effect on those Americanos contemplating travelling South of the Border, and remains relevant today. 

Then there are passages about gringo participation in some of the more clandestine features of life South of the Border:

For years the Paris Clinic, which recently went out of operation, was the biggest and classiest abortion mill in Tijuana. It provided a whole coterie of movie stars with well-publicized 'miscarriages.' The director, a leading surgeon, donated his morning hours to the local hospital; in the afternoon he tended to his private practice, and each evening he and his staff performed fifteen to thirty abortions in the basement of his home. 

Some chapters, such as 'Senor Tijuana is Gringo', belabor the intricacies of criminal machinations to an eye-glazing point of numbness, perhaps reflecting the author's desire to lend a note of journalistic authenticity to his voyeurism. These can make the book's 180 pages slow going at times, and are the reason I can't give it more than a three-star rating. 

Summing up, its lack of footnotes and sources limits the utility of 'Poso del Mundo' as a historical or sociological reference. However, it retains value as an observation of postwar Mexico  and a disquieting reminder that past efforts to 'improve' or 'reform' Mexico have been frequent, and patently unsuccessful. 'Poso' makes clear that the conditions showcased in Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and Sicario didn't spring up overnight, but were present long, long ago............

May is No Place for Gringos Month

 May is 
No Place for Gringos 
Month !

The tank they threw me into was one of the worst there, with killers and dope fiends and homosexuals grabbing at you. The moment I came in, somebody noticed the mark on my finger left by the ring I had turned over to the guards, and they started beating me because they thought I was hiding it. 

-Poso del Mundo by Ovid Demaris

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to take a break from reviewing science fiction, fantasy, and horror media from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and instead turn our attention to other genres of fiction and nonfiction. 

And there were flies. Many flies. And pariah dogs.

Jocelyn glumly regarded two large curs engaged in an indolent tug of war over the torn carcass of a third, headless and disemboweled. One had a front paw, the other, the tail. The vertebrae seemed not so much flexible as elastic. 

-Incident at La Junta by Oliver Lange

Before the Sicario movies, before Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, there was a body of fiction and nonfiction literature that dealt with hapless gringos who found themselves in places where being an Americano was a liability.......whether with the native population, the criminal element, or (worst of all) the federales.

And so, for May 2022, we've decided to focus on vintage books dealing with the misadventures of gringos who find themselves South of the Border. 

Whether it's in MAY-hee-COH, WHAT-a-Mala, or EL SAL-va-DOR, those hellholes offer nothing to witless gringos but perdition, depravity, and death !

....Haydon felt the first twinges of eeriness that was the city's gift to any arriving traveler who knew anything about the country's history. The low-powered streetlamps gave a macabre glow to the smoke that hung about the towering cypresses of the boulevard like an infernal breath. Haydon could not avoid thinking of what the smog consisted of, for he had seen more than a few bodies dumped in the garbage of the ravines, most of them mutilated and swollen like sausages from the tropical heat. 

-Body of Truth by David Lindsey

Sadistic caudillos who scheme to subject gringa women to Fates Worse than Death............... desperate inquiries into the fates of gringos Gone Missing in Guatemala's 'dirty war'..........and Mexican police whose easygoing smiles conceal a willingness to visit all manner of horrors on those Americanos who decide to hide out in the wrong places........

Come along, on a dangerous trip South of Border. 

Before we go, amigo, make sure you have a healthy retainer with a Mexican attorney, and the contact information for the U. S. consulate........it might make things a little easier for you when the trip turns into a nightmare............