Three-time Edgar winner T. Jefferson Parker has made a name for himself over the years, cranking out tough, ambitious crime novels focusing on the moral and ethical challenges faced by the men and women who work law enforcement in Southern California. These are smart, savvy books full of crisscrossing subplots and multiple viewpoints, high on moral ambiguity and short on easy, pat answers.
But The Border Lords, the fourth book to feature journeyman cop Charlie Hood (last seen in Iron River earlier this year) is something else. Mostly because this time it’s difficult to suss out exactly what’s going on—a marked change for a writer as generally rooted in clean, clear storytelling as Parker. Initially things seem pretty straightforward: Charlie is on loan to the Feds at Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, where fellow ATF agent Sean Ozburn has been deep undercover for an inordinate length of time, hopping back and forth across the US-Mexico border, buying and selling houses and guns, slowly building up a case against the notorious Baja drug cartel. But the young operative’s behavior has become increasingly erratic of late, to the point where Charlie and his team must confront the very distinct possibility that Sean’s gone seriously rogue—or completely over the edge.
Parker gets a big thumbs up for hinting that Sean’s abrupt about-face may involve more than the usual cop pulp fare of corruption and coercion, dangling left-field suggestions of everything from poison to the supernatural. Whether the author pulls it off—and whether readers want hot-tub soaked New Age hokum introduced into their gritty police stories—is another matter. Parker lets the reasons for Sean’s fall from grace dangle for far too long. It doesn’t help that Charlie, never the most dynamic of series heroes, ends up playing second banana here not just to the scenery-chewing Sean and his frantic wife Seliah (who seems to be slipping into the same darkness), but also to ambitious (and ambitiously crooked) rookie cop Bradley Jones, Bradley’s rock star wife, and to a mysterious interloper with apparently mystical powers who claims to be eternal.
With so much going on—and most of it out of his sight, Charlie seems more lost than usual, a befuddled innocent bystander in his own series. Fortunately, when the various plot threads finally do come together, Charlie’s there to ride out the stormy conclusion. But by then, it may be too late for readers new to the series.
