Head Games: A Novel

Head Games is a wistful ballad of lost America rooted in borderland myth and history.

In March 1916, Mexican General Pancho Villa raided and destroyed the town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing several civilians — the first and only successful stab at mainland America by foreign forces until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. President Woodrow Wilson dispatched Black Jack Pershing and an army of 10,000 into Mexico to find and bring back Gen. Villa — dead or alive.

The chase descended into a national debacle. Villa escaped, living in comfort and peace until his assassination in 1923. A short time later, someone dug up Pancho's body and stole his head. Villa's "officially" missing head is now linked in Tex-Mex folklore and myth with a vast and still-missing treasure of gold and silver.

An American soldier-of-fortune was arrested for stealing Pancho Villa's skull. Many believe he was hired by the grandfather of U.S. President George W. Bush. Prescott Bush was a member of the secretive Yale Skull and Bones Society. Other members include President William Howard Taft, Henry Luce, Senator John F. Kerry, George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush. In 1918, Prescott Bush, purportedly, personally participated in stealing the skull of Geronimo to be placed in the Skull and Bones' infamous trophy cabinet.

Head Games' narrator is Hector Lassiter, a larger-than-life crime writer who knew Hammett and Chandler...a boozing, brawling, much-married charmer who fished with Hemingway and bedded Hollywood starlets. Now widowed and feeling his age, Lassiter recovers Villa's head. Within hours of taking possession of the skull, Lassiter and a young poet sent to profile him for True Magazine are targets of competing fraternities, Mexican bandits and U.S. intelligence services. The breakneck chase extends across 1957–1970 America — from the cantinas of old Mexico to the Venice, California set of Orson Welles' noir classic Touch of Evil, to the sanctum sanctorum of Yale's infamous Skull and Bones Society. The cast of characters includes Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Webb and a young and gone-missing National Guardsman named "George W."

The legends linking the missing heads of Geronimo and Pancho Villa became a touchy issue during George H.W. Bush's presidential race against Michael Dukakis. Currently, there is a growing movement in Mexico to push for George W. Bush to press Yale and his old fraternity to return Pancho Villa's skull to the Mexican government.

"In McDonald's fun, deft debut, set mostly in 1957, Sen. Prescott Bush has sent out the call: bring me the head of Pancho Villa, the late Mexican revolutionary. Aging writer Hector Mason Lassiter, author of pulp novels like The Land of Fear and Dread and Border Town, gets caught in the crossfire between Mexican nationalists and frat boys out to place Villa's head in Yale's Skull and Bones Society trophy case. Along the road to hell, Lassiter picks up a young love interest while dropping in on Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich on the set of Touch of Evil, but that doesn't slow down the action (it's a tricky thing, firing for flesh wounds with a machine gun at close range). Reminiscent of James Crumley's Milo Milodragovich PI novels but Crumley lite, this slick caper novel touches chords of myth, history, loss and redemption just enough so you can hear echoes faintly under the gunfire. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Much of Head Games reads like a picaresque adventure, but McDonald's portraits of Welles, Dietrich, and Pancho Villa are beguiling and seem knowing. This one is simply great fun!" Booklist

"A turbulent tale of murder, conspiracy and political intrigue....Despite the intriguing premise, not for the faint-hearted." Kirkus Reviews

"Offering the same array of nostalgic delights as Paul Malmont's The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, this is recommended for most public libraries." Library Journal

"Every now and then you run into a book that has it all: humor, a delightfully dark tone, a world-weary and larger-than-life protagonist and a widly inventive storyline. Craig McDonald's Head Games is such a novel...worthy of James Ellroy or James Crumley." BookPage

"Head Games is terrific, a real discovery, informed by — but never weighed down by — Craig McDonald's intimate knowledge of pulp fiction, politics, history, literature, film noir and all manner of frontiers. A truly original debut that leaves one eager to see what this writer will do next." Laura Lippman, bestselling author of Every Secret Thing

"'You've got to find what you love and let it kill you.'...I'd kill for those lines...I'm beyond impressed." Ken Bruen, author of American Skin

"Reading Craig McDonald's Head Games was like reliving those wonderful and exciting, tequila-fired weekend border-town tours of my youth in the '50s. A different character, vivid and lively, waiting around every new corner of the artfully twisted plot. The time and place are captured perfectly, and story never falters as it dashes to the surprising ending. It made me homesick for El Paso the way it was." James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss

Craig McDonald is an award-winning journalist and editor. His book Art In the Blood features interviews with 20 top crime and mystery writers including James Ellroy, Dennis Lehane, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley.