The Devil Takes You Home set in USA/Mexico by Gabino Iglesias

Submitted: 18th July 2022

The Devil Takes You Home

The Devil Takes You Home set in USA/Mexico by Gabino Iglesias – 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….

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Destination: Texas and Cuidad Juarez, Mexico

Author guide: Gabino Iglesias

Genre: thriller

Food and drink to accompany: nothing as you might be sick

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A thriller to take you to the dark underworld of the Mexican cartels and the USA drugworld

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A shocking novel and a very raw and visceral one in many ways. However, its brutality and shock factor is its speciality and once you add in the horror and the mad violence of it all, then it is a novel you will never forget.

Mario is a loving father who starts on a downward spiral when his young daughter is given a devastating diagnosis. What happens next is truly shocking. With mounting debt from healthcare bills (the novel is set in today’s America), the father gets more and more desperate. He takes a job from a a former colleague but this is money gained at the end of a gun. Maruo has to become a hitman and head to the US/Mexico border to intercept a drug’s cartel cash shipment.

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This a breaking-bad kind of novel. Hard-hitting like a punch to your gut and head at the same time. I was horrifed to think that there are probably thousands of Marios in the US who face a desparate situation to pay for crippling healthcare costs. I don’t condone what he goes on to do, but I can understand it. I thought it was interesting how we go on the journey with Mario in two ways – he’s not sure of his new job at first but then actually starts to ‘enjoy’ it. It’s almost a way for him to get out his anger and sense of injustice and all the rage he feels inside.

The setting is hot and visceral. Sparse with the dangers of Mexico and the cartels ever present – but also of this remote land close to the border where Mario and his family live. There ‘s the image throughout of a long and open road, tumbleweed floating across it. Exposed and vulnerable. Then we have the most brutal scenes you can imagine inside the drug cartels themselves. A punch to the gut of a reading experience.

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There’s a lot here about life in America in general and not just the crippling costs of healthcare. There’s racism against the hispanic people, the injustice of so much in life and yet proud. good people at heart just trying to survive, trying to beat the poverty that America heaps on top of them. The horror elements are clear and they are both subtle and smack-your-face obvious. Are the monsters in life real or those we imagine and which ones are the worst?

What really made the novel for me was the smattering of Spanish throughout.Not all is translated and I read Spanish so didn’t realise at first. Guess you would miss a bit without translating it. BUT this is what mirrors the confusion, heat and misunderstandings the characters face. This is real world, authemtic and hard luck.

A different world in many ways. But at the core of this, a father who just wants his daughter to live. Who just wants to survive his family’s descent into poverty just because in America, they couldn’t afford their daughter to get ill. Heartbreaking.

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Twitter: @Gabino_Iglesias

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The Devil Takes You Home set in USA/Mexico by Gabino Iglesias