Alicia Gaspar de Alba - Desert Blood

Just wanted to report that Black Orchid Bookstore in NYC sent me a copy of Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (Bonnie and Joe are good people who will track down titles and ship them out). I read the opening chapter – gripping. You know how they say that the mystery writer should drop the body in the first chapter? Well, if you haven’t heard of the Juárez murders, it may interest you to know that this book is based on real incidents that have been happening in that city for some years now. There are about four hundred bodies that have dropped – all women, mostly raped or mutilated – plastic bags melted onto their faces, eyes removed, wombs removed. Not much action taken on either side of the border, not because these women are prostitutes – they aren’t. But because they are factory workers and their daughters. That is, they are brown and poor.

I have a feeling this will be very noir indeed. But pale in comparison to the truth.