The Dead Women of Juarez – Sam Hawken

Read as leg 4 (Juarez, Mexico) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Ciudad Juarez on Mexico’s northern border is where ex-boxer Kelly Courter now calls home. He fled his real home in the US as a last desperate act in a downward spiral from potential contender to drugged-up punch bag with a felony charge hanging over his head.

Here across the border he ekes out a living in the ring as ‘white meat’ for up and coming local fighters, and out of the ring as gofer and accomplice to Estaban, a small time drug pusher. The good news is he’s off the drugs and has a good ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with Estaban’s sister Paloma. He’d like to cement that further and has upped his training and cut down the drinking. But Paloma has other priorities; she is deeply involved with a support group for women whose daughters, sisters or mothers are ‘missing’ – among the scandalous hundreds in the city who have been taken, raped and murdered over recent years.

More professionally involved with the ‘feminocidios’ is Rafael Sevilla of the State Police; he’s also involved with policing the drug-dealing ‘narcotraficantes’, so Kelly’s on his radar - more as an informer than a target.

So far, so atmospheric, with plenty of local colour, poverty, exploitation, petty crime and sex for sale in the heat and dust of the city. Then the book explodes in a frenzy of violence. The feminocidios strike near to home; the city police investigation is lazy, ham-fisted, brutal and possibly corrupt. Sevilla’s response is to work alone to find the truth and seek some small justice for the dead women of Juarez.

This is a thriller not for the faint-hearted. The few sex scenes are explicit if not erotic; the violence is more pervading and is described in disturbing detail. This is one Mexican city not on my holiday list. However the read moves quickly with short chapters, morphing midway from Kelly’s narrative to Sevilla’s, and building to an action-packed climax.

How well it serves in bringing the (true) dead women scandal to the world’s attention is uncertain, but the attempt is to be applauded.

The Program – David Walsh

David Walsh is the Sunday Times journalist who refused to accept that Lance Armstrong raced clean and made it his business to prove it. Walsh had been covering the Tour de France since 1982 and when he first met Armstrong in 1993 he was immediately impressed by the 21 year-old Texan’s force of personality and ambition to win.

The next four years were significant for both Walsh and Armstrong. Armstrong battled with and overcame cancer while Walsh was sickened by the revelations of widespread doping in his favoured sport of cycling. So, in 1999 when Armstrong returned to what was meant to be a cleaned-up Tour, and produced barely credible performances, Walsh smelt a rat.

Armstrong won that Tour, and then the next six, and while most journalists lapped up the story – cancer survivor overcomes odds for sporting success – Walsh became an increasingly lone voice in questioning its validity. He didn’t just question, he investigated and turned up evidence and witnesses; he also uncovered intimidation and cover-up.

In 2005, Walsh and like-minded French journalist Pierre Ballester published the detailed allegations in a book.  ‘LA Confidential’ could only be published in France due to Armstrong living up to his name with strong arm legal moves that threatened to sue any English language publisher. Armstrong rode out the storm and retired with his record (and prize money) intact. It would take another seven years and the testimony of team-mate Floyd Landis for Walsh’s position to be vindicated.

The book is detailed and meticulously referenced and cycling insiders may be comfortable with the constant asides and shifts in timeframe, but I sometimes found them difficult to follow. To me the book is more about Walsh than Armstrong and the author’s search for the truth and his battles to get it published.

As a result I now know quite a lot about how Armstrong suppressed suspicions and bullied the cycling world, but not as much as I would like about how he managed to avoid getting caught by doping control.

Forces of Nature – Brian Cox (with Andrew Cohen)

In this book based on his recent TV series Professor Brian Cox (aided by the programme producer) sets out to answer some simple questions about our everyday experiences – the shape of a snowflake, the motion of the earth, the origin of life, and the colours of the rainbow.

Inevitably the answers are not so simple, involving atomic and molecular structure, relativity and space-time, the biochemistry of LUCA (our last universal common ancestor) and the nature of light and the electromagnetic spectrum. But in Cox’s capable hands the explanations are revealed to rest on simple foundations – universal laws of physics and chemistry.

I did not see the TV series and only acquired the book (a Christmas present) having browsed it in a shop and been pleasantly surprised at the apparent depth of science in the text. First impressions were confirmed by the reading; there is nothing dumbed down here, there are equations aplenty and all the concepts are painstakingly but elegantly explained. I almost, briefly, understood general relativity – but that point (event) in space time has now disappeared into my personal past.

The large format hardback edition is lavishly illustrated with colour stills from the programme, and only some feature Dr Cox looking butch and moody in scuba suit, pilot fatigues or mountaineering gear. Most of the others are stunning nature shots although not all seem relevant to the text. Similarly some of the diagrams and figures, despite looking nice, lack proper explanation.

But these are niggles, forgivable product design features, that do not detract from the quality of the writing that manages to be rigorous, informative and entertaining. The four sections – symmetry, motion, elements, and colour – hang together remarkably well with a tangible progression that leaves the careful reader feeling better informed and in awe at how scientists have decoded nature without detracting from its wonder.