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.