A review of Iron River by T. Jefferson Parker

Iron River: A Charlie Hood Novel
By T. Jefferson Parker
NAL Trade, 2011, 400 pages, $14.00
ISBN: 978-0451232427
Book review by Wayne C. Rogers

I’ve been reading the fiction of T. Jefferson Parker since Laguna Heat was first published back in 1985. Mr. Parker never writes a bad book. His novels are always enjoyable, which is all anyone can really ask of a piece of fiction. Occasionally, however, Mr. Parker writes a novel that’s exceptional in its scope and transcends the genre with a sense of sheer power, elegance, and in-your-face characters that leave you wishing they were real and covering your back. One novel that comes to mind is Silent Joe, which deals with an Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy who’s a master of the martial arts and carries three .45 caliber semiautomatics on him at all times. Oh, he also had acid poured onto his face when he was a baby. Doesn’t that brief synopsis make you want to check out Silent Joe? Another novel that comes to mind is Iron River: A Charlie Hood Novel. This is the third book of an ongoing series that’s centered on L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy, Charlie Hood. The first two novels with Hood in them are L.A. Outlaws and The Renegades. The fourth novel in the series, The Border Lords, has just come out in hardcover and is the next book to be read after I finish this review.

In Iron River (the term used to describe the flow of weapons from the United States into Mexico), Charlie Hood is on loan to the ATFE (think ATF) from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department to help with Operation Blowdown. The ATFE has Charlie stationed in the California border town of Buenavista where the other team members are located. The purpose of Operation Blowdown is to stem the flow of handguns across the border, which is a daunting goal to say the least. It’s like trying to keep drugs from coming into the country…an impossible and frustrating chore.
Charlie is excited about his new posting, but deep down he has yet to recover from the death of Allison Murrieta (L.A. Outlaws), a woman he loved. Still, everything is going fine in Buenavista until his first bust takes place and an innocent bystander is accidentally killed by team member, Jimmy Holdstock. As it turns out, the bystander was none other than the son of Drug Cartel kingpin, Benjamin Armenta. Armenta wants revenge for the death of his boy and sends his killers into the United States to kidnap Jimmy so he can be tortured and murdered as an example to U.S. Drug Enforcement officers. This is where Armenta makes his mistake. After sending a video of Jimmy being tortured to the team members of Operation Blowdown, the law enforcement officers decide to ignore their orders from higher up and to go into Mexico to rescue Jimmy (man, that scene gave me goose bumps!). Charlie goes with them and has to prepare himself for killing anyone who gets in the way of saving his new friend.

The rescue attempt to save Jimmy is only a small, but very exciting part of Iron River. Charlie will also have to deal with a hit-and-run victim named Mike Finnegan, a man who’s a bit unusual to say the least in that he knows things he shouldn’t and claims to be a supernatural being sent here to earth to meddle in the ways of mankind and to assist humanity on its journey in the constant battle between good and evil. Charlie, of course, thinks the guy is crazy, but he’s also smart as hell and has inside knowledge that continuously surprises the young deputy.

Along with Mike Finnegan, Hood will also come into contact with Bradley Jones, who’s the young son of the late Allison Murrieta, and is seeking to become an L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy. The only problem with this is that Bradley’s working both sides of the same coin by assisting Carlos Herredia and his people to get a stronghold in Southern California and to fight the other cartels. To do this, Bradley is putting together a sweet deal with Ron Pace, the owner of a bankrupted armaments company. For nearly a million dollars, Pace will call back his workers and make a thousand handguns based on his Love .32 caliber pistol, which can easily be turned into an automatic weapon with a fifty-round clip capacity. Charlie will have his hands full trying to deal with this, saving Jimmy, and starting a new relationship with a pretty doctor.

Like I wrote at the beginning, Iron River proved to be one of T. Jefferson Parker’s exceptional novels to me. I loved this book, especially the moments of heroism Charlie Hood shows when in Mexico, attempting to save his tortured friend from certain death. On top of that, Mr. Jefferson writes with a strong sense of the visual, allowing his readers to see with their mind’s eye the intricate details of each scene as if they’re actually there within the story. He does this in a way that’s totally natural in its gentle beauty, yet intermixed with a strong confidence that has come from twenty-five years of writing. The author knows his stuff. This is never more apparent than in the many characters that enter and exit throughout the novel, coming into contact with each other in a way that seems real and not imagined or forced. All of them come to life with a just a few short sentences that enables the reader to feel as if they’ve know the characters all of their life.

Suffice it to say that T. Jefferson Parker is definitely an author’s author. His writing, character development, the structure of his plots, and the general theme throughout the story of how guns are killing thousands of people every year in the war between the drug cartels and the ATFE’s battle to stop the flow of weapons across the border. Iron River is a masterpiece in every sense of the word and is a book that should win every award out there for best crime novel of the year. Highly Recommended!