Synopses & Reviews
SOMETIMES THE DEAD WON'T GO AWAY.
Lionel Bruno Jordan was murdered on January 20, 1995, in an El Paso parking lot, but he keeps coming back as the skeleton key to a multibillion-dollar drug industry, two corrupt governments -- one called the United States and the other Mexico -- and a self-styled War on Drugs that is a fraud.
Phil Jordan runs DEA intelligence, but when his brother Bruno is killed, he is powerless. Amado Carrillo Fuentes runs the most successful drug business in the history of the world, but when his usefulness to governments ceases, he mysteriously dies in a hospital. Carlos Salinas runs Mexico, but as soon as he leaves office, his brother is jailed for murder and Salinas flees into exile. Sal Mart¡nez, DEA agent and Bruno's cousin, does the secret work of the U.S. government in Mexico, but when he seeks revenge for his cousin's murder, he is sentenced to a term in federal prison.
Beneath all the policy statements and bluster of politicians is a real world of lies, pain, and money.
Down by the River is the tale of how a murder led one American family into this world and how it all but destroyed them. Of how one Mexican drug leader outfought and outthought the U.S. government. Of how major financial institutions fattened on the drug industry. And how the governments of the United States and Mexico buried everything that happened.
All this comes together down by the river, a place where the fictions finally end and the facts read like fiction. This is an unforgettable American story about drugs, money, murder, and family.
Review
"[A] gripping, very disturbing look at the drug trade....Readers are unlikely to forget the gallery of characters, law enforcers and law-breakers, who proceed with swagger and grit in the endless, often pointless, war on drugs." Vanessa Bush, Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Bowden's hard-boiled prose and the generally violent tone are reminiscent of Hunter Thompson and James Ellroy, but this authors gaze remains trained upon fundamental human issues....Memorable and remarkable, as true-edged and dangerous as a brand-new stiletto." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Bowden weaves an intricate tale of treachery, deceit, corruption and death on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border....Bowden maintains an intense noirish tension throughout, though some may find his use of interior monologue irritating at times....Still, that doesn't mar a dramatic detective story and a biting critique of the U.S. war on drugs." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[A] brutal and brilliantly reported account of life in the drug trade....Bowden has never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like, and his overwrought prose has a paranoid air....But his characters...are remarkably vivid, and he captures the way greed, ethnicity, and an old-school emphasis on honor interact to create a world in which violence is the only constant." The New Yorker
About the Author
Journalist Charles Bowden has written eleven previous nonfiction books, including Blood Orchid, Trust Me, Desierto, The Sonoran Desert, Frog Mountain Blues, and Killing the Hidden Waters. Winner of the 1996 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, he lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Table of Contents
Another country 1
Flesh 11
Crime 13
Blood 109
Bones 175
Song 177
Dreamtime 235
Fantasma 313
Bets 315
Bruno's song 367
Our country 393
Acknowledgments 399
Notes 403
Index 419