Iron River (Charlie Hood Series #3)

not good

just awful--had trouble finishing it--wierd characters--why authors don't stick w/ what readers like is a mystery to me--maybe they get bored

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Deputy Hood couldn't catch a cold

T. Jefferson Parker is one of our superior fictive writers. His books are always novel, superbly crafted and before this sensitive and very loopy deputy pinned on his badge ultimately gratifying. Now, with Charlie Hood, Mr. Parker has wandered, seemingly, off into the nether world that attracts so many fabulous authors, that netherworld of ghosts, goblins, psychoinsecurity and evil triumphant, veering from fiction to science fiction. Hood stands around throughout the book unable to pull the literary trigger on any of his miscreants. He enjoys the sunsets, the parties, the Southern California vibe. But the poor man should really give the squad room a pass and let the adults play. I stopped reading the Kaye Scarpetta novels years ago when the cunning archfiend in the one I was on conveniently slipped or tripped and fell into a swimming pool of solvent (!) two or three pages from the end (by which time, of course, one was frantic to discover how our heroine would escape THIS TIME! with so few pages left). That tome got airborne in my living room. Hood seems about ready for a similar test flight.

Lives up to billing

Skips around a bit getting the plot started which makes it a bit difficult to follow the plot. By about 100 pages in, everything sorts out and from there it is a good read. Probably based upon enough reality to be regarded as a docudrama in the very real drug war and gun trade being waged by drug lords, gun and drug smugglers and the governments along our southwest border with Mexico.

Did Not Like This Book!!!

I like T. Jefferson Parker but......Not sure what happen with this book. There is not an end, the book just stops. I would not recommend this book.

Muddled, incoherent, nearly unreadable

I like Parker. I've read everything he's ever written and count "Silent Joe" among the better novels in my collection. But this book is a poorly written mess. There is no coherent plot, the characters behave erratically, the bad guys are cardboard cutouts and the good guys are blithering idiots. Who would house an agent targeted for assassination by Mexican narco trafficers in a hospital near the Mexican border?
The book is an unbelievable mish-mash of half-baked plotting and poor writing.
Let's hope Parker's next book is an improvement.

terrific police procedural

Los Angeles sheriff's deputy Charlie Hood is assigned to the Operation Blowdown taskforce trying to end the tidal wave of guns and money flowing down the "Iron River" from the States to Mexico. Charlie understands the irony that the Second Amendment crowd who many demand tighter border patrol sells arms to the cartels who sell back drugs and people.

During a shootout between Charlie and his Blowdown unit against a cartel buying weapons leaves the son of the cartel leader dead. Now the border war is personal with Charlie and his team being targeted one at a time through loved ones if necessary. At the same time bankrupt weapons manufacturer Pace Arms has brokered a deal with a cartel through a middle man Bradley Smith, making life for law enforcement more dangerous.

The third Hood police procedural (see L.A. Outlaws and The Renegades) is a terrific tale that spotlights how large, complex and dangerous the gun trafficking sold south is. Ironically during the recession this segment of free enterprise drugs for guns and cash remains profitable. The story line is fast-paced but the scope is so massive that gunrunning removes the faces of the victims and the survivors as characters including Charlie become almost irrelevant. As Stalin said: "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is statistic", which in this case overwhelms the cast and plot.

Harriet Klausner

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