Review: Deliberately paced but fascinating
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 16, 2013
Phil Strias is an ordinary man, a husband and father, and is sometimes clumsy and accident prone. His friends are fans of raunchy humor and are sometimes rowdy, but they are all basically good people trying to make an honest living in San Miguel. One of his friends in particular, Ty Betancourt, is seeking to expose rampant drug trafficking and money laundering (plundering the till, so to speak) done by various political officials in the area. Phil has had experience with government corruption in the past, and the events of the book begin to mirror the events of his time spent in Guatemala. An interesting storytelling device, in my opinion, and one that works well.The descriptions of typically mundane things is used to great effect. The character's encounters with wild animals seems to mimic the developments in the story, for example, and it really drives home to issues of survival in an unfair world. As a bonus, the prose was pretty good and the story seemed to be well edited and formatted. The story is rather slow (as of the first chapter I had no idea where it was going, the second chapter gave general hints that the story was about corruption, etc). The slowness might be a turn-off to some, but it seems to be deliberate. This is less a high-intensity thriller involving an ex-CIA agent and more about an ordinary man being caught in the webs of political corruption. It is meant to be more realistic, and, in that regard, is a breath of fresh air for me. This book had a good point and was well written, enough that I didn't mind the slow pace. I'd recommend it to people who would like some fiction that makes them think.