The Hot Country A Christopher Marloe Cobb Thriller [Paperback]

The Hot Countryis an epic tale of war, love, and espionage. Christopher Marlowe Cobb is an American newspaper war correspondent who travels to Mexico in 1914 to report on the country’s civil war, the invasion of Vera Cruz, and the controversial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal (The Jackal). Covering the war in enemy territory and sweltering heat, Cobb falls in love with Luisa, a beautiful Mexican laundress, who is not as innocent as she seems.

Upon investigating a German ammunition ship docked in the marina, Cobb finds himself fired upon by unknown assailants, then witnesses a priest being shot with marksman-like precision. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to help him find out the identity of the sniper and, more importantly, why important German officials are coming into the city in the middle of the night from that very ship docked in the port. Soon Cobb finds himself wrapped up in a web of secrets that could change the the fate of the fate of myriad world leaders, redefine the destiny of two continents, and end his life at any moment. An action-packed chronicle of passion and war, Butler’s powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed.

This high-spirited adventure by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler is an antic concoction of genre clichés, literary sendups, personal homages, fanciful history and passages of great writing. —New York Times Book Review

It's an exciting story, much of it based on fact, and Butler has a good time with it. His writing is both crisp and thoughtful, his people ring true and he offers an amusing portrait of a golden age in journalism. . . .The Hot Countryis a thinking person's thriller, the kind of exotic adventure that, in better days, would have been filmed by Sam Peckinpah. —Washington Post

Butler takes an often-overlooked chapter of history and turns it into a whip-smart tale of intrigue and esl<