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2000s: The only thing more dangerous than the cartels is the truth…
City Without Stars
What you need to know before your trail
Ciudad Real is the city of death and war. A deadly war is erupting between rival cartels and at the same time, hundreds of female sweat-shop workers are being murdered. A police investigator, Fuentes suspects most of his colleagues are on the payroll of narco kingpin, El Santo.
Pilar, a union activist, sees the growing problems and cover ups of the murders and wants to do something about it. But she’s headstrong and wants to take social justice in her own hands. However it soon becomes clear that she is going to have to work with Fuentes if the situation is ever going to stop.
However, it soon becomes clear how deep the entire cover up goes when the name of Mexico’s saintly orphan rescuer, Padre Márcio keeps popping up. Many more secrets are about to be unearthed and the dead may finally have their voices heard.
Travel Guide
Ciudad Real/Cuidad Juarez
The city in the book is fictional and no surprise really given the story line and association that comes with everything in the book. However there are similar towns of this description across Mexico (Cuidad Real is loosely inspired by Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Guadalajara) . One of these places, perhaps the most infamous is Ciudad Juarez and its association with “The missing” – women mostly who work in factories and who are often found murdered and left in the street or in grassland waiting to be found.
The city is also known for its association with drugs and the drug trade. Not surprisingly over the years, there has been a mass exodus of people (well those who could afford to leave the city) due to the ongoing violence from the Mexican Drug War. Violence towards women has been escalating since the early 1990s.Escalating turf wars between the rival Juárez and Sinaloa Cartels has left the city battered by brutal violence and fear. The situation is said to have improved since the war calmed down a bit, but there are still hundreds of murders a year.
Ciudad Real in the novel is a very violent city. A brutal, unforgiving, deadly city which is wilder than any animal in its natural habitat.The city is in flux:
“In those days, the people of Cuidad Real considered themselves fortunate. They lived on a border with the most powerful and attractive nation on earth”
“Times were good. Before the killings. Before the narcos. ”
The police realise what they are up against:
“Over eight hundred murdered;zero suspects. Number that don’t add up”
Tim Baker adds:
Ciudad Real
Mary-Ellen González is from Ciudad Real by way of San Diego. Fifty percent gringa, hundred percent party girl, she’s just gone missing. Is she another victim of the wave of femicides, or an unwilling witness with crucial information who’s gone into hiding to save her life?
Tijuana, Baja California – Mexico.
A border city of sex and sea; a treacherous landscape negotiated by criminals and tourists alike.
Every day, Americans leapt into the town’s dark and urgent offerings and were carried, gasping and satiated, back up to the surface by local swimmers before being returned to the dry, flat world across the border. A world of normalcy and family. A world of superiority. Their reality. Not Tijuana’s.
Tijuana, where police detective Fuentes and union activist Pilar first clashed, and where both of them were very nearly murdered. Tijuana, whose local cartel has just declared war on Ciudad Real’s narco chieftain, El Santo.
Ciudad Real/ Juárez – Mexico
Ciudad Real (loosely inspired by Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and Guadalajara) – Mexico. The city of maximum danger, where millions are made every day in the local sweatshops and tens of millions more smuggling drugs across the border. Where a deadly war has just broken out between rival cartels for control of the border crossing.
The centre of Ciudad Real is a colonial treasure made up of ancient churches, hooded arches, fortified gateways and the patina sheen of history.
But the realities of the modern world constantly intrude, the city’s stone, stucco and hand-painted tiles giving way to the city’s mean outskirts with its plywood, cardboard and cinderblock; the rhythmic hum of tyres ribbing the old town’s cobblestones ceding to the fast smear of blacktop and the roar of eighteen-wheelers barrelling towards the border.
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
This is book is like a punch to the gut.
Then a stab in the heart
I have heard and read a lot about cities ravaged by drug cartels in Mexico as a student of Spanish and this really honed in on many of the grittier and unmentionable themes of what drugs and the drug trade means for the man and woman on the street. It’s not for the faint hearted – scenes are graphic and unforgiving as is the language. Raw and brutal on every level.
There is some great writing here and even some humour – Felipe for example is described as “MoreMichelin than Goodyear” and his character is one I really enjoyed getting to know. I admired and feared for him and felt very keen to find out more about him and follow his investigation.
The historical and social background to this story however is the real selling point. The massacres and drug wars described in the book may be fictionalised here but they are real. Devastating drug wars and needless, senseless killings of women. It’s a war every day and seeing it evoked so well here in fiction is both frightening and gripping.
Hard hitting and honest. A city ravaged by fear and more. Brutally good.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: City Without Stars
Destination: Ciudad Juarez Author/Guide: TimBaker Departure Time: 2000s
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