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Hot Country (2012)

by Robert Olen Butler(Favorite Author)

3.54 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1616575603 (ISBN13: 9781616575601)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

HighBridge Audio

series

Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller

review 1: Robert Olen Butler is a Pulitzer winning literary writer who in The Hot Country turns his talents to historical crime fiction. The result, for me at least, is a story that has the prose, pace and reflective aspects of literary fiction, but lacks the tightness, edge and intrigue of crime fiction. The book is billed as a thriller, but the pace is for the most part languid and the tale drawn out with few tension points, especially in the first half where there are some incidents but they lack edge and verve. Added to this, the historical context is underdeveloped. I know very little about Mexican history or its relations with the US and having read the story I still know little beyond the two month, narrowly presented slice of the story. Somewhat ironically given that th... moree lead character is a journalist, the reader is provided with next to no wider context. The story did not need to be an in-depth history lesson, but it did need to provide a reasonable amount of historical orientation. Taken together, the pace, lack of context and tension, left me adrift rather than being captivated. Once the tale left Vera Cruz it picked up pace a little and became more adventurous, with Cobb shifting from reporting history to actively intervening and creating it by adopting the swashbuckling role of an undercover, frontline war correspondent. It was a shame then that the qualities of the second half of the story did not run throughout. On the plus side, Cobb is an engaging lead character, I really enjoyed the subplot of his correspondence with his wayward mother, and there is enough potential to suggest an interesting series. Indeed, despite being a little lukewarm to this outing, I would be interested in reading about Cobb’s next adventure.
review 2: Maybe it's me.I love ROB's collections of short fiction, but have never been able to get through one of his novels. The short works are so vibrant and imaginative. He is such a master of creating various personalities that I get dazzled as he adopts all the different personas. His idea-driven pieces are imaginative, smart and whimsical.When I saw he had written a genre novel- something noirish in the historical mystery vein - I thought that this would be the ROB novel that could hold my attention.But no.Stopped caring 76 pages in. less

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