The devil takes you home : a barrio noir

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Iglesias, Gabino

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

308 pages ; 24 cm.

Genre:

Noir fiction.

Thrillers (Fiction)

Summary:

"Buried in debt due to his young daughter's illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel's cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won't return the same." --publisher's website.

Subject Term:

Assassins -- Fiction.

Criminals -- Fiction.

Cartels -- Mexico -- Fiction.

Mexican Americans -- Fiction.

Suspense fiction

Publication Info:

New York : Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company, 2022.

Subject:

Assassins -- Fiction.

Criminals -- Fiction.

Cartels -- Mexico -- Fiction.

Mexican Americans -- Fiction.

Suspense fiction

Mexican-American Border Region -- Fiction.

Noir fiction.

Thrillers (Fiction)

Hatchet men (Assassins)

Hit men

Hitmen

Triggermen

Crime and criminals

Delinquents

Offenders

Cartels -- Law and legislation

Combinations, Industrial

Combinations in restraint of trade

Industrial combinations

Chicanos

Hispanos

Mexican Americans -- United States

Suspense tales

Tales, Suspense

American-Mexican Border Region

Border Region, American-Mexican

Border Region, Mexican-American

Borderlands (Mexico and U.S.)

Mexico-United States Border Region

Tierras Fronterizas de México-Estados Unidos

United States-Mexico Border Region

SAILS ISBN:

9780316426916

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
Searching... Attleboro Public Library	IGLESIAS,G	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Carver Public Library	FIC IGL	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... East Bridgewater Public Library	IGLESIAS, G. 2022	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library	FIC IGLESIASD	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... New Bedford Francis J. Lawler Branch	FIC IGLESIAS	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... New Bedford Free Public Library	FIC IGLESIAS	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Pembroke Public Library	FIC IGLESIAS, G.	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Rehoboth - Blanding Free PL	FIC IGLESIAS, G.	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Seekonk Public Library	FIC IGLESIAS	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Somerset Public Library	IGLESIAS GABINO	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Taunton Public Library	IGLESIAS, GABINO	1ST FLOOR STACKS	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

This genre-defying, Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker award-winning thriller follows a father desperate to salvage what's left of his family--even if it means a descent into violence.

Buried in debt due to his young daughter's illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel's cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won't return the same.

The Devil Takes You Hom e is a panoramic odyssey for fans of S.A. Cosby's southern noir, Blacktop Wasteland, by way of the boundary-defying storytelling of Stephen Graham Jones and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR, Harper's Bazaar, Chicago Tribune, Vulture, Oprah Daily, CrimeReads, The Millions, and many more!

An Edgar Award Finalist * A Bram Stoker Award Winner * A Shirley Jackson Award Winner * A Book of the Month Club Pick * An August Indie Next List Selection * An ABA Indie Bestseller

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

After Mario, the narrator of this bewitching paranormal thriller from Iglesias (Coyote Songs), racks up huge debts to pay for his four-year-old daughter's leukemia treatments, he becomes a hit man for Brian, his meth-addicted friend in Austin, Tex. Mario agrees to help Brian rob a Mexican cartel, a job that will yield them $200,000 each. The pair rendezvous with Juanca, who takes them to Mexico through a secret tunnel after a horrifying pit stop for a gruesomely obtained safety talisman. The stakes rise as supernatural beings threaten Mario and shake his confidence. Meanwhile, Juanca convinces Mario that Brian means to kill him for his share. Bizarre happenings increase as the two men prepare for a showdown with members of the cartel. Iglesias effectively portrays Mario's fragile mental state and builds a subtle but complex mythology out of chilling details. Readers should be prepared for some intense violence, as well as passages of untranslated Spanish ("Melisa y yo morimos en vida, and that's the worst kind of death"). Fans of creepy but emotionally deep action novels will be satisfied. Agent: Melissa Danaczko, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (Aug.)

Kirkus Review

A desperate father finds himself drawn into a paranormal underworld. Faced with a growing stack of medical bills to pay for his daughter's cancer treatments and prone to hallucinatory visions, Mario contacts Brian, an old meth-head acquaintance, who sets him up with a contract killing. Mario executes the job with unsettling ease but discovers otherworldly worms inhabiting the body of the man he just murdered. This first portent signals strange and nasty things to come for Mario, whose extralegal efforts fail to save the life of his child. When his marriage subsequently falls apart, Mario smokes meth, kills several more people, and agrees to one final assignment: Rob a Mexican cartel. Disturbing supernatural encounters en route to this suicide mission intensify the impossible danger of this unlikely feat, which culminates in monstrous battles with a cartel that is not what it seems. While Iglesias pulls off vivid characterizations (one man's face is described as "a fistful of sliced ham") and he threads enough Spanish through the dialogue and narration to appeal to bilingual readers, the story feels stretched and uneven. Less genre-defiant than genre-dysmorphic, the book never quite settles into a storytelling groove and instead cycles between pulse-pounding thriller, diabolical horror, and violent narcoliterature. Nevertheless, readers captivated by the characters' motivations and the occult pyrotechnics will quickly devour it whole. A vivid, if unbalanced, supernatural thriller at the U.S--Mexico borderlands. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Pay attention, because a lot happens very quickly at the outset of this new novel by the author of Zero Saints (2015) and Coyote Songs (2018). Mario's four-year-old daughter is diagnosed with leukemia; bills pile up; Mario is fired from his job because he's never there; his family falls apart; he contemplates suicide; and he winds up killing people for money. Then things get really dark. Another job, this one involving a major robbery from some seriously dangerous people, could give Mario a bright new future, or it could kill him. This novel is so gritty that you'll feel like washing your hands after you've read it; so brutal you'll feel like you've been punched in the face. It is uncompromisingly, relentlessly, stomach-clenchingly disturbing. Not for every reader, to be sure, but a must for those unafraid of visiting the dark side, it's brilliantly conceived and executed, a novel that proves again what Iglesias' fans have known all along: he is a storyteller unafraid of exploring the shadowed corners of his characters and their world.

Library Journal Review

When his young daughter gets sick and his marriage disintegrates, Mario takes a job as a hit man to pay off the mountains of medical debt. He is surprised by how willing he is to commit violence. When his daughter dies, he takes one last job that makes him a target of a Mexican drug cartel. He and his buddies begin a trip that will take them through Texas and across the border into Mexico. In the end, he will either have $200,000, or he'll be dead. Iglesias's (Coyote Songs) latest is a horrifying thriller with a supernatural twist. Jean-Marc Berne provides a chilling narration of characters with few redeeming qualities. Iglesias's lush prose is enhanced by Berne's skill in maintaining a tone of dread and his ability to fluidly switch between English and Spanish. The supernatural elements, steeped in Mexican folklore, are a perfect addition to this disturbing tale. VERDICT Iglesias's horrifying latest will have cross-appeal for fans of horror and crime. The intense violence may not appeal to all listeners, but this book is an excellent fit for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Stephen Graham Jones, and S.A. Cosby.--Elyssa Everling