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Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller #1
The Hot Country
From the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning Robert Olen Butler comes his very first crime novel, an epic historical tale of war, love, intrigue, and espionage. Christopher Marlowe Cobb, known as “Kit”, is an intrepid American newspaper war correspondent who travels to Mexico in 1914 to report on the country’s civil war, the American invasion of Vera Cruz, and the controversial presidency of Victoriano Huerta, El Chacal (The Jackal). Covering the war in enemy territory and sweltering heat, Cobb falls in love with Luisa, a beautiful young Mexican laundress, who is not as innocent as she seems.
While investigating a German ammunition ship docked in the marina, Cobb finds himself fired upon by unknown assailants, then witnesses a priest being shot with marksman-like precision right in the cross the holy man wears around his neck. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to help him find out the identity of the sniper and, more importantly, why important German officials are coming into the city in the middle of the night from the ship at the port. Soon Cobb finds himself wrapped in a web of secrets that could change the fate of myriad world leaders, redefine the destiny of two continents, and end his life at any moment
An action-packed chronicle of passion and war, Butler’s powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed, from a writer who is a true master of his craft.
While investigating a German ammunition ship docked in the marina, Cobb finds himself fired upon by unknown assailants, then witnesses a priest being shot with marksman-like precision right in the cross the holy man wears around his neck. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to help him find out the identity of the sniper and, more importantly, why important German officials are coming into the city in the middle of the night from the ship at the port. Soon Cobb finds himself wrapped in a web of secrets that could change the fate of myriad world leaders, redefine the destiny of two continents, and end his life at any moment
An action-packed chronicle of passion and war, Butler’s powerful crime-fiction debut is a thriller not to be missed, from a writer who is a true master of his craft.
326 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2012
178 people are currently reading
749 people want to read
About the author
Robert Olen Butler
86 books454 followers“I’ll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period.”
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 167 reviews
March 7, 2013
This book is subtitled, "A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller," but in truth it moves at a pretty languid pace until the last quarter of the book or so. That is not to suggest that it's a bad book by any means, only that it does not race along at the pace one would normally expect of a thriller.
Christopher Cobb is war correspondent for a Chicago newspaper who finds himself in revolutionary Mexico, covering the American occupation of Vera Cruz in 1914. Mexico is a country in turmoil; President Wilson's intentions are not exactly clear, and the American "invasion" does not sit well with the Mexican populace.
Shortly after American forces occupy Vera Cruz, a German ship appears in the harbor. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to watch the ship and under the cover of night, a mysterious German official disembarks. Cobb is naturally curious and senses an important story. He resolves to tail the German and discover his intentions. Along the way, Cobb becomes enamored of a beautiful Mexican sharpshooter, and before long he finds himself on a perilous journey into the heart of the Mexican Revolution that will dramatically affect his own life and which may change the course of history.
This is an interesting tale, and Christopher Cobb makes a sympathetic protagonist. It will appeal especially to those who enjoy historical fiction and who have an interest in this period of Mexican and American history.
Christopher Cobb is war correspondent for a Chicago newspaper who finds himself in revolutionary Mexico, covering the American occupation of Vera Cruz in 1914. Mexico is a country in turmoil; President Wilson's intentions are not exactly clear, and the American "invasion" does not sit well with the Mexican populace.
Shortly after American forces occupy Vera Cruz, a German ship appears in the harbor. Cobb employs a young pickpocket to watch the ship and under the cover of night, a mysterious German official disembarks. Cobb is naturally curious and senses an important story. He resolves to tail the German and discover his intentions. Along the way, Cobb becomes enamored of a beautiful Mexican sharpshooter, and before long he finds himself on a perilous journey into the heart of the Mexican Revolution that will dramatically affect his own life and which may change the course of history.
This is an interesting tale, and Christopher Cobb makes a sympathetic protagonist. It will appeal especially to those who enjoy historical fiction and who have an interest in this period of Mexican and American history.
June 24, 2012
This is the first book I've ever read by Robert Olen Butler. A couple of years ago I read a few excerpts from Severance in Tin House or some magazine like that, and I liked the pieces but thought they would get too gimmicky as a collection. This isn't really that important though. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I've never read him, but I know that he has a reputation as being a good writer. He's won prizes and all.
This book though. I don't know. It was probably a bad place to start.
I rambled on about literary writers doing crime fiction in this review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... and some of what I said there is probably applicable here. Although this book was much better than the awfulness of Madison Smartt Bell's Straight Cut.
From the design of the cover and how the book ends I'm thinking that this might the start of a series of books that Butler is planning. The cynical side of me sees this as a literary author attempting to get in on some of the looser dough that flows between readers, bookstores and publishers in the genre's (as opposed to the serious literahture). But then a different cynical part of me thinks, but whose going to read this book?
I just can't picture the audience.
The protagonists name is Christopher Marlowe Cobb, nicknamed (you see this coming don't ya?) Kit. He's an ace reporter for a Chicago newspaper who gets his hands dirty covering wars. The novel takes place in Mexico as Woodrow Wilson launches a small invasion on a Mexican town. As life in an occupied city goes on Cobb discovers some weird goings-on with by some German diplomats and he sets off to uncover the story.
The book is formatted exactly like your standard PI type crime / mystery novel. It's embellished with a lot of historical and literary details, but the action moves forward by the well-worn script that every boilerplate mystery novel marches to. But the embellishments don't really feel all that different from the quirks thrown in to say a cozy mystery. Instead of getting tips for quilting or how to bake the perfect lemon danish the reader gets some Elizabethan quotes thrown their way and a crash course into early 20th century Mexican politics. With is fine, I found myself more interested in the color added to the story than the actual story itself ().
For a three hundred page 'crime' novel this was a slow and at times ponderous read. This is the part that makes me unclear of who will like the book. Fans of mystery novels I don't think will enjoy the pacing and over-writing that goes into the book. Readers of serious literature I don't think will enjoy the cookie-cutter plot and while they might like the writing there is lots of good writing out there to enjoy that has a better payoff than this.
This book though. I don't know. It was probably a bad place to start.
I rambled on about literary writers doing crime fiction in this review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... and some of what I said there is probably applicable here. Although this book was much better than the awfulness of Madison Smartt Bell's Straight Cut.
From the design of the cover and how the book ends I'm thinking that this might the start of a series of books that Butler is planning. The cynical side of me sees this as a literary author attempting to get in on some of the looser dough that flows between readers, bookstores and publishers in the genre's (as opposed to the serious literahture). But then a different cynical part of me thinks, but whose going to read this book?
I just can't picture the audience.
The protagonists name is Christopher Marlowe Cobb, nicknamed (you see this coming don't ya?) Kit. He's an ace reporter for a Chicago newspaper who gets his hands dirty covering wars. The novel takes place in Mexico as Woodrow Wilson launches a small invasion on a Mexican town. As life in an occupied city goes on Cobb discovers some weird goings-on with by some German diplomats and he sets off to uncover the story.
The book is formatted exactly like your standard PI type crime / mystery novel. It's embellished with a lot of historical and literary details, but the action moves forward by the well-worn script that every boilerplate mystery novel marches to. But the embellishments don't really feel all that different from the quirks thrown in to say a cozy mystery. Instead of getting tips for quilting or how to bake the perfect lemon danish the reader gets some Elizabethan quotes thrown their way and a crash course into early 20th century Mexican politics. With is fine, I found myself more interested in the color added to the story than the actual story itself ().
For a three hundred page 'crime' novel this was a slow and at times ponderous read. This is the part that makes me unclear of who will like the book. Fans of mystery novels I don't think will enjoy the pacing and over-writing that goes into the book. Readers of serious literature I don't think will enjoy the cookie-cutter plot and while they might like the writing there is lots of good writing out there to enjoy that has a better payoff than this.
January 15, 2014
Olen Butler tries something unique with this wartime spy novel set in Veracruz, Mexico in 1914. World War I was beginning in Europe, Mexico was experiencing armed insurrection as part of the Mexican Revolution, the United States occupied Veracruz after a diplomatic dispute, and Germans came to use money and influence with the Mexican government to encourage them to respond militarily to the U.S. Reporting on all this was “Kit” Christopher Marlowe, newspaper journalist and son of an aging Hollywood actress of some repute.
Using a style made famous by Humphrey Bogart in ”Treasure of Sierra Madre” and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, this noir novel follows Kit as he digs for stories in the German connection. He ends up meeting Pancho Villa and falling for a beautiful and talented muchacha but the story only seems to be getting going when this episode ends. With so much political intrigue in Mexico in the early twentieth century, it’s ripe for novelistic exploitation. This series could live a long life.
I listened to the HighBridge audio of this book, read by Ray Chase. Chase does a wonderful job of speaking Chandler-ese with a Bogart swagger, and accelerating with the action so that some chapters of fighting and tension raced. The Kit character is a likeable one, but in the beginning his journalistic seen-it-all irony and sarcasm made it difficult for me to sympathize and identify with him. The story itself was intriguing enough to pull us along until we could see Kit’s other talents.
Kit’s other skills involve the other meaning of “Marlowe,” which would be a reference to the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. He can fight and he can act, all of which he needs before the end of the novel. There is character development to spare here, which is why I imagine it to the first of a series. Olen Butler has chosen his area well, as it is underserved in the literary mystery series market and there is as much intrigue as in any major port during wartime.
Using a style made famous by Humphrey Bogart in ”Treasure of Sierra Madre” and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, this noir novel follows Kit as he digs for stories in the German connection. He ends up meeting Pancho Villa and falling for a beautiful and talented muchacha but the story only seems to be getting going when this episode ends. With so much political intrigue in Mexico in the early twentieth century, it’s ripe for novelistic exploitation. This series could live a long life.
I listened to the HighBridge audio of this book, read by Ray Chase. Chase does a wonderful job of speaking Chandler-ese with a Bogart swagger, and accelerating with the action so that some chapters of fighting and tension raced. The Kit character is a likeable one, but in the beginning his journalistic seen-it-all irony and sarcasm made it difficult for me to sympathize and identify with him. The story itself was intriguing enough to pull us along until we could see Kit’s other talents.
Kit’s other skills involve the other meaning of “Marlowe,” which would be a reference to the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. He can fight and he can act, all of which he needs before the end of the novel. There is character development to spare here, which is why I imagine it to the first of a series. Olen Butler has chosen his area well, as it is underserved in the literary mystery series market and there is as much intrigue as in any major port during wartime.
October 2, 2012
Politics, transportation, and information
The story of Pancho Villa and his band of miscreant rebels seems timely mostly because of the behind the scenes meddling from other countries. The way Butler tells Pancho’s story it’s filled with mystery, excitement, cross and double cross. There’s also lots of history or perhaps revisionist history included. Don’t miss the parts about the current modes of travel. Of course there were horses and carriages and railways influenced the action. Most exciting was the recent invention and use of the airplane! It was also a time when the newspaper was the most prominent and innovative means of disseminating what was happening in the world. Politics, transportation, and information are key factors in “Hot Country”.
Pancho is set on taking control of his native Mexico along with his loyal foot soldiers however this is complicated by the struggle between the US and Germany both countries are set on using the Mexican drama to further their own political agendas. The US, as such a close neighbor, is concerned about defending its borders. Christopher Marlowe Cobb is a newspaperman who goes to report the drama but winds up at the heart of the action. The story is filled with spies, mercenaries, thwarted personal and political ambition, war and murder. And it’s all placed against the backdrop of the imminent war in Europe.
Butler always writes well and “Hot Country” is no exception though, for my taste, there were far too many battle and fight sections but to be fair there’s no way to write realistically about Villa’s revolution without bloodshed. The parts concerning Cobb’s love interest and his relationship with his actress mother were top rate. The descriptions of Pancho and the main German protagonist were also well done. It was fun to see Butler write an adventure story.
This review is based on an e-galley provided by the publishers.
3.5/5
The story of Pancho Villa and his band of miscreant rebels seems timely mostly because of the behind the scenes meddling from other countries. The way Butler tells Pancho’s story it’s filled with mystery, excitement, cross and double cross. There’s also lots of history or perhaps revisionist history included. Don’t miss the parts about the current modes of travel. Of course there were horses and carriages and railways influenced the action. Most exciting was the recent invention and use of the airplane! It was also a time when the newspaper was the most prominent and innovative means of disseminating what was happening in the world. Politics, transportation, and information are key factors in “Hot Country”.
Pancho is set on taking control of his native Mexico along with his loyal foot soldiers however this is complicated by the struggle between the US and Germany both countries are set on using the Mexican drama to further their own political agendas. The US, as such a close neighbor, is concerned about defending its borders. Christopher Marlowe Cobb is a newspaperman who goes to report the drama but winds up at the heart of the action. The story is filled with spies, mercenaries, thwarted personal and political ambition, war and murder. And it’s all placed against the backdrop of the imminent war in Europe.
Butler always writes well and “Hot Country” is no exception though, for my taste, there were far too many battle and fight sections but to be fair there’s no way to write realistically about Villa’s revolution without bloodshed. The parts concerning Cobb’s love interest and his relationship with his actress mother were top rate. The descriptions of Pancho and the main German protagonist were also well done. It was fun to see Butler write an adventure story.
This review is based on an e-galley provided by the publishers.
3.5/5
December 7, 2021
This is the first in the series and I'm thinking it would be good to read this one first. This gives a lot of back story for what is to come. I don't know if the others need to be read in order, but I probably will. Unintended, this was sort of a serendipitous read for me, coming on the heels of Fall of Giants as it does. In that one, Ken Follett writes briefly about the US blockade of a German shipment of arms to Mexico in the days leading up to WWI. Mexico was in the midst of a revolution. It also had oil. Germany thought it prudent to secure a supply of that commodity when it was becoming more obvious that a war in Europe would take place. The US thought it didn't want a German satellite on its southern border. How many of us knew this tidbit of history?
And so, the book opens with newspaperman Christopher Marlowe Cobb in the hot country of Vera Cruz, Mexico, looking for a story. It is told throughout in the first person. My first impression was that he had a personality much like Archie Goodwin of the Nero Wolfe series. A man full of himself, wise-cracking and sarcastic, with a bit of cynicism about the world in general.
This definitely fulfills my requirement of good characterization. The writing was a surprise. There were the occasional sentence fragments, but used effectively for emphasis, rather than what I would attribute to laziness. But the most startling things were a few - very few - sections where Cobb is telling us about extreme action and the only punctuation for a very long paragraph are commas. I suppose each author uses stream of consciousness in a different way and this is the only way I can describe it, though it isn't how I have encountered that literary device previously. There is also a very good story. As my favority Anthony Trollope would say
And so, the book opens with newspaperman Christopher Marlowe Cobb in the hot country of Vera Cruz, Mexico, looking for a story. It is told throughout in the first person. My first impression was that he had a personality much like Archie Goodwin of the Nero Wolfe series. A man full of himself, wise-cracking and sarcastic, with a bit of cynicism about the world in general.
"Come in. As long as you're not one of Huerta's assassins," I said in Spanish, which I'm pretty good at. I figured that accounted for the smile she gave me.But "Kit" Cobb is more fully-fleshed than is Archie Goodwin. Always these things in my life: to write, to read, to be near the clash of arms, near the life and death of men striving for something and prepared to give everthing for it. And so he is not an alternate Archie Goodwin. This is not a detective novel, although newspapermen have to think in similar ways as do detectives, nosing out what maybe people don't want them to know.
He was starting light with El Sol, but there was still a long way to go, even till noon, and he'd be picking up the pace, moving on to serious drinking. I was about to call him "Pops" and tell him to slow down, but both those things were a mistake with him, so I kept my mouth shut for the moment ...
This definitely fulfills my requirement of good characterization. The writing was a surprise. There were the occasional sentence fragments, but used effectively for emphasis, rather than what I would attribute to laziness. But the most startling things were a few - very few - sections where Cobb is telling us about extreme action and the only punctuation for a very long paragraph are commas. I suppose each author uses stream of consciousness in a different way and this is the only way I can describe it, though it isn't how I have encountered that literary device previously. There is also a very good story. As my favority Anthony Trollope would say
To my thinking, the plot is but the vehicle for all this; and when you have the vehicle without the passengers, a story of mystery in which the agents never spring to life, you have but a wooden show. There must, however, be a story. You must provide a vehicle of some sort.This isn't literature, but this has the elements I require in a very good read. I'm probably exaggerating its goodness with the 5th star, but I can't restrain myself.
August 11, 2016
Olen Butler tries something unique with this wartime spy novel set in Veracruz, Mexico in 1914. World War I was beginning in Europe, Mexico was experiencing armed insurrection as part of the Mexican Revolution, the United States occupied Veracruz after a diplomatic dispute, and Germans came to use money and influence with the Mexican government to encourage them to respond militarily to the U.S. Reporting on all this was “Kit” Christopher Marlowe, newspaper journalist and son of an aging Hollywood actress of some repute.
Using a style made famous by Humphrey Bogart in ”Treasure of Sierra Madre” and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, this noir novel follows Kit as he digs for stories in the German connection. He ends up meeting Pancho Villa and falling for a beautiful and talented muchacha but the story only seems to be getting going when this episode ends. With so much political intrigue in Mexico in the early twentieth century, it’s ripe for novelistic exploitation. This series could live a long life.
I listened to the HighBridge audio of this book, read by Ray Chase. Chase does a wonderful job of speaking Chandler-ese with a Bogart swagger, and accelerating with the action so that some chapters of fighting and tension raced. The Kit character is a likeable one, but in the beginning his journalistic seen-it-all irony and sarcasm made it difficult for me to sympathize and identify with him. The story itself was intriguing enough to pull us along until we could see Kit’s other talents.
Kit’s other skills involve the other meaning of “Marlowe,” which would be a reference to the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. He can fight and he can act, all of which he needs before the end of the novel. There is character development to spare here, which is why I imagine it to the first of a series. Olen Butler has chosen his area well, as it is underserved in the literary mystery series market and there is as much intrigue as in any major port during wartime.
Using a style made famous by Humphrey Bogart in ”Treasure of Sierra Madre” and Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, this noir novel follows Kit as he digs for stories in the German connection. He ends up meeting Pancho Villa and falling for a beautiful and talented muchacha but the story only seems to be getting going when this episode ends. With so much political intrigue in Mexico in the early twentieth century, it’s ripe for novelistic exploitation. This series could live a long life.
I listened to the HighBridge audio of this book, read by Ray Chase. Chase does a wonderful job of speaking Chandler-ese with a Bogart swagger, and accelerating with the action so that some chapters of fighting and tension raced. The Kit character is a likeable one, but in the beginning his journalistic seen-it-all irony and sarcasm made it difficult for me to sympathize and identify with him. The story itself was intriguing enough to pull us along until we could see Kit’s other talents.
Kit’s other skills involve the other meaning of “Marlowe,” which would be a reference to the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe. He can fight and he can act, all of which he needs before the end of the novel. There is character development to spare here, which is why I imagine it to the first of a series. Olen Butler has chosen his area well, as it is underserved in the literary mystery series market and there is as much intrigue as in any major port during wartime.
August 4, 2021
Veracruz, Mexico circa 1914 is a very interesting setting for a historical thriller. Butler has written excellent books about serving in Vietnam and I did not know he wrote this series. He uses his skill as an evocative writer to make the city and it’s bodegas, trains, come alive in this book. The main character was not as well drawn, I liked him but didn’t have a fix on his abilities which seemed almost limitless. But this is a first in a series and I am likely to read more.
September 2, 2019
I had chosen one of these Cobb "Thriller" books when I was at the library further down the road in the series. When I got home I looked it up and saw that the series is available on Kindle Unlimited so when I headed for the return train I dropped off the heavy book at the library with every intention of reading through the full series on my kindle.
Then I read this one and now plan to return all the further books in the series. I don't find the protagonist appealing. Frankly he doesn't have the moral code I prefer.
The Mexican conflict in 1914, American invasion of Vera Cruz something I had not seen featured in any of the historical fiction I have consumed - interesting, yes.
The story of Cobb's mother from drama queen to Pinkerton agent also...interesting but not easily digested. I tasted it and will now hunt down something I will enjoy spending time reading. It could be I will be missing out on a feast, but I will stick with my decision.
Kindle Unlimited
Then I read this one and now plan to return all the further books in the series. I don't find the protagonist appealing. Frankly he doesn't have the moral code I prefer.
The Mexican conflict in 1914, American invasion of Vera Cruz something I had not seen featured in any of the historical fiction I have consumed - interesting, yes.
The story of Cobb's mother from drama queen to Pinkerton agent also...interesting but not easily digested. I tasted it and will now hunt down something I will enjoy spending time reading. It could be I will be missing out on a feast, but I will stick with my decision.
Kindle Unlimited
April 29, 2014
Florida State University professor Robert Olen Butler may be the last person you'd expect to write a thriller. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," a collection of short stories about Vietnamese refugees trying to make a new life in the South, and his output since then has consisted of polished, interesting books such as "A Small Hotel," which recounted the dissolution of a marriage and its ramifications. As Tampa Bay Times book editor Colette Bancroft noted in her review of this book, Butler has ranged far and wide with his subjects -- he has written novels about a woman married to a space alien (Mr. Spaceman) and about people gone to their reward (Hell), as well as basing short story collections on tabloid headlines (Tabloid Dreams), postcards (Had a Good Time), couples' thoughts during the act of sex (Intercourse). Given Butler's adventurousness, perhaps it was inevitable he would try something in a popular mode.
So here is Butler's first entry in the thriller genre, and a sort of a spy thriller at that. And I have to admit, he knows how to spin a yarn and keep the reader reading -- and, occasionally, thinking. The story features shootouts, sex, burglary, murder, maternal issues, and one wonderful sword-vs.-typewriter battle that actually made me laugh out loud.
"The Hot Country" finds its hero, swashbuckling reporter Christopher Marlowe "Kit" Cobb, hanging out in Vera Cruz after the U.S. Navy has invaded in 1914 to save a few American sailors taken into custody by the Federales. Hunting for a big story, Cobb winds up following a scar-faced German official up into the hinterlands for a secret meeting with Pancho Villa. Along the way he will maim one man and kill several more, and also fall for a beautiful female washerwoman turned sniper. Parts of it seem like a throwback to old-fashioned melodrama, particularly the incredibly convenient appearance of a soldier of fortune named Tallahassee Slim, but there are also some acute insights about American intrusions into foreign countries and the politics involved.
I don't want to give away any more of the plot than this, because Butler does a nice job of taking the story through some twists and turns I didn't foresee. I have only two criticisms. One is that I think the airplane he features toward the end of the book is about 10 years out of date compared to what was actually in the air in 1914. My second is that he tries too hard in his action scenes to make them flow smoothly, using a lot of "ands" to create one long sentence. Smarter writers know you can cut the sentences short in those spots and still make the reader see the scene flipping along smoothly in front of them, like an old movie chittering along and telling a breathtaking tale. I'll look forward to Butler's next installment of this series, "The Star of Instanbul."
So here is Butler's first entry in the thriller genre, and a sort of a spy thriller at that. And I have to admit, he knows how to spin a yarn and keep the reader reading -- and, occasionally, thinking. The story features shootouts, sex, burglary, murder, maternal issues, and one wonderful sword-vs.-typewriter battle that actually made me laugh out loud.
"The Hot Country" finds its hero, swashbuckling reporter Christopher Marlowe "Kit" Cobb, hanging out in Vera Cruz after the U.S. Navy has invaded in 1914 to save a few American sailors taken into custody by the Federales. Hunting for a big story, Cobb winds up following a scar-faced German official up into the hinterlands for a secret meeting with Pancho Villa. Along the way he will maim one man and kill several more, and also fall for a beautiful female washerwoman turned sniper. Parts of it seem like a throwback to old-fashioned melodrama, particularly the incredibly convenient appearance of a soldier of fortune named Tallahassee Slim, but there are also some acute insights about American intrusions into foreign countries and the politics involved.
I don't want to give away any more of the plot than this, because Butler does a nice job of taking the story through some twists and turns I didn't foresee. I have only two criticisms. One is that I think the airplane he features toward the end of the book is about 10 years out of date compared to what was actually in the air in 1914. My second is that he tries too hard in his action scenes to make them flow smoothly, using a lot of "ands" to create one long sentence. Smarter writers know you can cut the sentences short in those spots and still make the reader see the scene flipping along smoothly in front of them, like an old movie chittering along and telling a breathtaking tale. I'll look forward to Butler's next installment of this series, "The Star of Instanbul."
October 4, 2014
The Hot Country – Great Historical Adventure
The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler is another Christopher Marlow Cobb “thriller” which according to The Washington Post is ‘A thinking person’s historical thriller’ and part of the literary thriller genre. Never have literary thrillers actually been that thrilling and the same can be said of The Hot Country. If this is a thriller then I am up for the Noble Prize in Literature next year. This is a good historical adventure which in places is stodgy but in others a gloriously written adventure.
Christopher Marlow Cobb is a war journalist who is in Vera Cruz, Mexico it is 1914 and Europe is teetering on the edge of war when a German boat drops anchor in the bay not far from a couple of American frigates. It is not the invading American’s that stir Cobb’s curiosity but a German official who comes a shore and is hidden away in the German consulate. Why would a German be interested in Mexico when the storm clouds are gathering over Europe?
To find out more Cobb has to assume the identity of a German so that he able to follow the German to his destination without raising attention to himself. He knows that the German must be heading out to meet the Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa but what will he be offering, arms or money possibly both? While on the train journey the service is held up by Villa’s bandits who rob the train and Cobb is taken with them when he bumbs in to a double agent he knows.
He manages to earn Pancho Villa’s trust, finds out the German’s plans and decides to get back to America as quickly as possible to write the story of his life. Somehow the story gets spiked but means Cobb has to return Mexico and meet with Villa.
This is an old fashioned adventure story based on historical fact with everything you expect, blood, lust, money and the US of A coming to the rescue. Well written the prose flows on the pages sometimes it over elaborates but that is my personal opinion. This is a good book for all those that enjoy a historical adventure but it is not a thriller. It is still a pleasure to read, even if you cannot overlook the fact that the Americans are the heroes and revolutionary leaders are backwards fools and the Germans are not much better. At times the imagery this book invokes had me thinking of John Wayne and other western heroes of the silver screen.
The Hot Country by Robert Olen Butler is another Christopher Marlow Cobb “thriller” which according to The Washington Post is ‘A thinking person’s historical thriller’ and part of the literary thriller genre. Never have literary thrillers actually been that thrilling and the same can be said of The Hot Country. If this is a thriller then I am up for the Noble Prize in Literature next year. This is a good historical adventure which in places is stodgy but in others a gloriously written adventure.
Christopher Marlow Cobb is a war journalist who is in Vera Cruz, Mexico it is 1914 and Europe is teetering on the edge of war when a German boat drops anchor in the bay not far from a couple of American frigates. It is not the invading American’s that stir Cobb’s curiosity but a German official who comes a shore and is hidden away in the German consulate. Why would a German be interested in Mexico when the storm clouds are gathering over Europe?
To find out more Cobb has to assume the identity of a German so that he able to follow the German to his destination without raising attention to himself. He knows that the German must be heading out to meet the Mexican rebel leader Pancho Villa but what will he be offering, arms or money possibly both? While on the train journey the service is held up by Villa’s bandits who rob the train and Cobb is taken with them when he bumbs in to a double agent he knows.
He manages to earn Pancho Villa’s trust, finds out the German’s plans and decides to get back to America as quickly as possible to write the story of his life. Somehow the story gets spiked but means Cobb has to return Mexico and meet with Villa.
This is an old fashioned adventure story based on historical fact with everything you expect, blood, lust, money and the US of A coming to the rescue. Well written the prose flows on the pages sometimes it over elaborates but that is my personal opinion. This is a good book for all those that enjoy a historical adventure but it is not a thriller. It is still a pleasure to read, even if you cannot overlook the fact that the Americans are the heroes and revolutionary leaders are backwards fools and the Germans are not much better. At times the imagery this book invokes had me thinking of John Wayne and other western heroes of the silver screen.
February 27, 2019
The Hot Country is set during the American occupation of Veracruz, Mexico in the months preceding the First World War. Christopher Marlowe Cobb is a US journalist who becomes involved in trying to uncover some sinister German activity among Mexican revolutionaries. This is a very interesting time of which I was keen to learn more and the book is written with an obvious (sometimes a little over-obvious) depth of knowledge. Robert Olen Butler creates a fine sense of the time and place, but I’m afraid I became very bored and eventually gave up after about 200 pages.
The problem is that the whole thing reads rather like a history book set as an exercise in Fine Writing. It is very, very slow; I don’t mind that of itself, but there is an air of self-indulgence in the long, crafted descriptions and the digressions, which are many. The first part of the book is heavily laced with a lot of irrelevant, tedious and sometimes downright pretentious stuff about his mother and his childhood, for example. The story develops very slowly among this and a wealth of very lengthy description and exposition. Just as a tiny example, when Cobb is on a Mexican train:
“I slept, fitfully, awaking to undifferentiated blackness out the window and to the sound of snoring and dream murmurings in Spanish and to the smell of cigarette smoke and pulque and to the smell of old sweat and the Mexicans’ heavy cover-up of soap and perfume, manufactured smells of lilac and rose and jasmine, and I woke to an ache in the side of my neck from the sleeping angle of my head and the ache in my butt and in my back from the rush-work seat.”
This is very good in its way, but when every tiny thing like dozing and waking up on a train is given this wealth of description it really does get a bit much. The final straw for me was when Cobb was drinking with a mercenary in bandit country, trying to determine what is going on and as he takes a sip we get several pages of Proustian recollections of the childhood smell of liquorice. Enough.
This was not for me, in the end. It’s beautifully written but I found it self-indulgent and dull.
The problem is that the whole thing reads rather like a history book set as an exercise in Fine Writing. It is very, very slow; I don’t mind that of itself, but there is an air of self-indulgence in the long, crafted descriptions and the digressions, which are many. The first part of the book is heavily laced with a lot of irrelevant, tedious and sometimes downright pretentious stuff about his mother and his childhood, for example. The story develops very slowly among this and a wealth of very lengthy description and exposition. Just as a tiny example, when Cobb is on a Mexican train:
“I slept, fitfully, awaking to undifferentiated blackness out the window and to the sound of snoring and dream murmurings in Spanish and to the smell of cigarette smoke and pulque and to the smell of old sweat and the Mexicans’ heavy cover-up of soap and perfume, manufactured smells of lilac and rose and jasmine, and I woke to an ache in the side of my neck from the sleeping angle of my head and the ache in my butt and in my back from the rush-work seat.”
This is very good in its way, but when every tiny thing like dozing and waking up on a train is given this wealth of description it really does get a bit much. The final straw for me was when Cobb was drinking with a mercenary in bandit country, trying to determine what is going on and as he takes a sip we get several pages of Proustian recollections of the childhood smell of liquorice. Enough.
This was not for me, in the end. It’s beautifully written but I found it self-indulgent and dull.
June 23, 2013
I don't often like books that win big prizes like the Pulitzer or writers who win the prizes. Too often, I find that prize winning writers don't know how to tell a good story, that they are too in love with their own voice to put the story and the character first. So it was with some trepidation, despite being interested in the plot and setting of "The Hot Country," that I picked up Robert Olen Butler's book. My doubt was quickly dispelled. "The Hot Country" is a fast-paced historical thriller that introduces the character of Christopher Marlowe Cobb, a Chicago newspaperman. The setting is Mexico; the time 1914, when the fires of revolution lit the country. At his best, Butler writes like Cormac McCarthy, but without McCarthy's affection (we don't need no stinking punctuation). At times, Butler writes like a modern day Hemingway. Hells bells, that's high praise for any writer. So whether you are attracted to Butler's prize-winning credentials or repelled by them, read this book. It's worthy of an award.
November 4, 2012
A fun little ride through the dry, hot world of early 1900s Mexico. You could call it a Western/Noir; as if the ghosts of Louis Lamour, Zane Grey, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler sat in with a Pulitzer Prize winning author like...well, like Robert Olen Butler. What you end up with is a narrative that gets inside your head like the rhythmic churning of the wheels of a steam-powered iron horse as it draws you closer and closer to a showdown with Pancho Villa in the middle of a tumultuous and revolutionary Mexico.
July 3, 2018
The early years of the twentieth century were a time of extraordinary upheaval. In China, first the Boxer Rebellion, then the 1911 Chinese Revolution. In South Africa, the Second Boer War (1899-02) and, across the globe, the Philippine-American War (1899-02) that came on the heels of the Spanish-American War (1898). In Russia, the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. The Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. And the First World War, of course. Meanwhile, King Leopold's minions were slaughtering millions in the Congo, and elsewhere in what we today call the Global South, conflict between indigenous populations and European colonialists was leading to the death of countless others.
Amidst the almost ceaseless violence that characterized this period, there was no event outside the borders of the United States that captured Americans' attention before the World War more than the Mexican Revolution. During the events that unfolded from 1910 to 1920, many of the leading figures of the revolution became household words in the US: Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero, Victoriano Huerta, Venustiano Carranza, and of course Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, the two most radical leaders of the insurgency. Not long before the United States entered World War I, our government invaded Mexico, occupying the Gulf port of Veracruz. And, in 1916, when Pancho Villa attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico, the US sent an expeditionary force under General John J. Pershing to capture Villa. Pershing failed, succeeding only in sparking a short war with the government of Mexico, then under Carranza's control.
In The Hot Country, Robert Olen Butler sets his adventure tale against this explosive background. The story takes place in 1914. Butler's protagonist, Christopher Marlowe Cobb, is a famous war correspondent for the Chicago Post-Express. His editor has dispatched him to Veracruz to cover the US invasion of Mexico. To Cobb's chagrin, President Woodrow Wilson has commanded the troops simply to occupy Veracruz and proceed no farther. Cobb has a commitment to honest reporting (unlike many of his peers), a love of rough sex, and a passion for adventure. ("I was known to get nostalgic over the smell of cordite.") He soon finds a way to become involved in action on his own, hooking up with an American spy, bedding Mexican women, facing off with a German agent sent to support Pancho Villa, partnering with an American soldier of fortune named Tallahassee Slim, flying across a desert in a Wright biplane, and enduring a close brush with death on more than one occasion in his dash across much of Mexico.
Both as historical fiction and as an adventure story, The Hot Country works well. But there's a problem with this book. Butler is clearly in love with the word "and." To convey a sense of breathlessness, he builds his action scenes with run-on sentences that tried my patience. Here, for example, is a singe sentence: "And I took off in a sprint, veering right, doing an end run around Villa and then curving back toward Mensinger at a sharp angle of approach, from off to his left, and he was slow even turning his face to me and I was almost upon him and I pulled up, raising my right arm, and I was swinging the sword as he lurched toward me off balance and he lifted his sword to parry and his saber and mind clanged between us and he stumbled away." There is no excuse for such laziness.
Amidst the almost ceaseless violence that characterized this period, there was no event outside the borders of the United States that captured Americans' attention before the World War more than the Mexican Revolution. During the events that unfolded from 1910 to 1920, many of the leading figures of the revolution became household words in the US: Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero, Victoriano Huerta, Venustiano Carranza, and of course Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, the two most radical leaders of the insurgency. Not long before the United States entered World War I, our government invaded Mexico, occupying the Gulf port of Veracruz. And, in 1916, when Pancho Villa attacked the town of Columbus, New Mexico, the US sent an expeditionary force under General John J. Pershing to capture Villa. Pershing failed, succeeding only in sparking a short war with the government of Mexico, then under Carranza's control.
In The Hot Country, Robert Olen Butler sets his adventure tale against this explosive background. The story takes place in 1914. Butler's protagonist, Christopher Marlowe Cobb, is a famous war correspondent for the Chicago Post-Express. His editor has dispatched him to Veracruz to cover the US invasion of Mexico. To Cobb's chagrin, President Woodrow Wilson has commanded the troops simply to occupy Veracruz and proceed no farther. Cobb has a commitment to honest reporting (unlike many of his peers), a love of rough sex, and a passion for adventure. ("I was known to get nostalgic over the smell of cordite.") He soon finds a way to become involved in action on his own, hooking up with an American spy, bedding Mexican women, facing off with a German agent sent to support Pancho Villa, partnering with an American soldier of fortune named Tallahassee Slim, flying across a desert in a Wright biplane, and enduring a close brush with death on more than one occasion in his dash across much of Mexico.
Both as historical fiction and as an adventure story, The Hot Country works well. But there's a problem with this book. Butler is clearly in love with the word "and." To convey a sense of breathlessness, he builds his action scenes with run-on sentences that tried my patience. Here, for example, is a singe sentence: "And I took off in a sprint, veering right, doing an end run around Villa and then curving back toward Mensinger at a sharp angle of approach, from off to his left, and he was slow even turning his face to me and I was almost upon him and I pulled up, raising my right arm, and I was swinging the sword as he lurched toward me off balance and he lifted his sword to parry and his saber and mind clanged between us and he stumbled away." There is no excuse for such laziness.
September 22, 2012
Reporters aren’t often viewed as heroes these days. But in earlier times they often did rise to celebrity status and occasionally did become heroes.
Christopher Marlowe Cobb is representative of the swashbuckling press corps dispatched to the hot spots of the world in the early days of the 20th century. In 1914 Cobb finds himself rubbing shoulders with the like of the real-life Richard Harding Davis and other correspondents in Mexico shortly after President Woodrow Wilson had dispatched troops to Vera Cruz to protect American interests.
It isn’t long before Cobb finds himself attracted to a beautiful Mexican laundress who proves to be as handy with a rifle as she is with an iron. While trying to unravel the mystery of Luisa he stumbles onto a German plot to use the turbulence of the Mexican political situation for that nation’s advantage against the United States.
Initially, Cobb smells a good story. The son of a renowned stage actress, he uses skills acquired by watching his mother and other thespians along with those of his own craft to infiltrate the ranks of Pancho Villa’s Army of the North. Headlines ultimately take second place to his devotion to his friends and national security.
A sub-plot about the relationship between Cobb and his mother is resolved in a surprising manner at the end.
This is a gripping thriller people with vivid depictions of characters and territory. I’m hoping Butler will bring Cobb back for more adventures in future. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
Christopher Marlowe Cobb is representative of the swashbuckling press corps dispatched to the hot spots of the world in the early days of the 20th century. In 1914 Cobb finds himself rubbing shoulders with the like of the real-life Richard Harding Davis and other correspondents in Mexico shortly after President Woodrow Wilson had dispatched troops to Vera Cruz to protect American interests.
It isn’t long before Cobb finds himself attracted to a beautiful Mexican laundress who proves to be as handy with a rifle as she is with an iron. While trying to unravel the mystery of Luisa he stumbles onto a German plot to use the turbulence of the Mexican political situation for that nation’s advantage against the United States.
Initially, Cobb smells a good story. The son of a renowned stage actress, he uses skills acquired by watching his mother and other thespians along with those of his own craft to infiltrate the ranks of Pancho Villa’s Army of the North. Headlines ultimately take second place to his devotion to his friends and national security.
A sub-plot about the relationship between Cobb and his mother is resolved in a surprising manner at the end.
This is a gripping thriller people with vivid depictions of characters and territory. I’m hoping Butler will bring Cobb back for more adventures in future. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
April 20, 2013
I found this book to be slow moving for the most part, but there are sections that are really exciting. When Butler writes his fighting scenes, he puts you right into the head of the protagoist. And every once in a while he channels Hemingway, and these passages are sublime. I was not sure I'd want to read more by Butler, but his last chapter changed my mind. I will read the sequel in the Christopher Marlow Cobb series.
January 15, 2019
Dramatically-named Chicago reporter Christopher Marlowe Cobb chases a story of international intrigue while covering the US occupation of Vera Cruz during the Mexican civil war. I enjoyed the settings and the historical context - I'll admit that I didn't know much about that period of Mexico's history so the book had me running to the encyclopedia to freshen up on the basic facts. But I found myself frequently skipping pages upon pages of "action," some of which were rendered in an unpunctuated stream-of-consciousness style that attempted to convey the panicked inner thoughts of the protagonist but ended up just being a big word salad. My biggest complaint is that Cobb figures everything out halfway through the book and then explains it all to the reader, leaving the second half for him to just verify his instincts and gather evidence in between even more bouts of excruciating "action." All that being said, the Cobb character grew on me a bit and I'll probably read the next book in the series because of its Istanbul setting more than anything else. I just hope the author learns that it's really kind of boring to read 10 pages about a sword fight....
January 7, 2025
I felt this story was about censorship more than anything. The main character is a war correspondent and inserts himself into the conflict in Mexico during the civil war and has some dealings with Pancho Villa. He learns of a man who is trying to trick him from Germany into fighting against the USA and the US American president doesn't want him to publish the story because it could force the US into war with Germany. There is a secondary plot with Kit's (the protagonist) mom and women that's kind of strange but adds some depth to the story. His mom works as an entertainer in a brothel, and interestingly enough doubles as another kind of worker. There is an intriguing female sharpshooter that the story kind of lingers about and nothing comes of that except Kit and her have an endearing moment then fuck like he wants to do with all the women he meets. The train car full of women that is left in Pancho Villa's possession would have been a better part of the story if Kit freed them or made a deal for their release by Pancho Villa or something like that. But overall a good historical fiction novel.
December 23, 2017
Set during the American invasion of Vera Cruz, Mexico, this thriller is extremely well-written that echoes Cry, the Beloved Country with an action-twist.
January 6, 2022
Well, I can’t say I’ve read an early 20th century historical fiction novel about the German influence on Pancho Villa to invade the United States before today, but now that I have, I’m left underwhelmed. A journalist is embedded in Vera Cuz, becomes way too close to the Villa story, and, of course, finds a way to go after the unpredictable Mexican deep into the backcountry. Sure, there are some snappy pieces of dialogue, but the author has this annoying style of writing un-Faulknereque run-on sentences for action sequences, that it cheapened the imaginative experience for me. Will not read book two, whatever it is.
March 27, 2016
I picked this book up off a price-reduced cart outside a San Francisco bookstore for something to read during down time on a business trip & on the flight home. I had gotten about halfway through it by the time I returned from that trip late last November, and I finished reading it today. Four months to read novel of average length. In the meantime I've finished reading perhaps 8 or 10 other books. Which is a roundabout way of saying that although I did not find The Hot Country an un-put-downable page-turner, I still found it interesting enough to return to from time to time, and I read it to the end. I liked it.
As other reviewers have said, it's a pretty straight-forward adventure/spy story, set in 1914 but told in a kind of retro 1940's noir-ish voice. Imagine Rick Blaine from Casablanca as a newspaper reporter in hot, dusty, sleepy, smelly Vera Cruz Mexico, where nothing much happens, hanging out with a few other bored reporters who generally start drinking earlier in the day than most people would consider healthy. Imagine him following leads to what he thinks is going to just be a good story to wire home to his editor in Chicago, but which instead winds up dragging him into intrigue with lots of cat-and-mouse, gunplay, evil villains, etc.
What makes the book enjoyable is the care that Butler brings to the task of fleshing out his characters. Yes, all of them are variations on stock roles (or, if you're not feeling generous, cliches). But each of them is deftly rendered, with a few telling lines or scenes -- or even merely a few telling words (for example the words "it's not important" spoken by a young Mexican laundress at one point). I found the people to be believable and interesting. Sure, the story was over the top, but that's not a bug, it's a feature.
The Hot Country is not high art but it is a fine diversion. It made me think about Mexico and about world events at the time that my grandparents were arriving in at Ellis Island while Europe roiled itself. I plan to pick up the next book in the series, The Star of Istanbul. It may take me another 4 months to get through it, but I expect I'll find it rewarding enough.
As other reviewers have said, it's a pretty straight-forward adventure/spy story, set in 1914 but told in a kind of retro 1940's noir-ish voice. Imagine Rick Blaine from Casablanca as a newspaper reporter in hot, dusty, sleepy, smelly Vera Cruz Mexico, where nothing much happens, hanging out with a few other bored reporters who generally start drinking earlier in the day than most people would consider healthy. Imagine him following leads to what he thinks is going to just be a good story to wire home to his editor in Chicago, but which instead winds up dragging him into intrigue with lots of cat-and-mouse, gunplay, evil villains, etc.
What makes the book enjoyable is the care that Butler brings to the task of fleshing out his characters. Yes, all of them are variations on stock roles (or, if you're not feeling generous, cliches). But each of them is deftly rendered, with a few telling lines or scenes -- or even merely a few telling words (for example the words "it's not important" spoken by a young Mexican laundress at one point). I found the people to be believable and interesting. Sure, the story was over the top, but that's not a bug, it's a feature.
The Hot Country is not high art but it is a fine diversion. It made me think about Mexico and about world events at the time that my grandparents were arriving in at Ellis Island while Europe roiled itself. I plan to pick up the next book in the series, The Star of Istanbul. It may take me another 4 months to get through it, but I expect I'll find it rewarding enough.
January 15, 2014
fairly interesting mash of western, noir, historical fiction (mexico usa germany geopolitical maneuverings ~ 1914). a savvy newspaper reporter goes to vera cruz to report on the revolutions of mexico (pancho villa carranza) and usa invasion of that port and naval blockade and german shipments of arms, and german attempts at funding revolution in mx, not because germans inherently supported mexican gente but to muddy waters of usa and their war in europe. so, back to novel, reporter turns out to be both much smarter than "other' americans" but also a bit of a swashbuckler and lady's man too.
olen butler is exalted professor at florida st uni, has written gobs of lit fic, won a pulitzer in 1992 for these short stories Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories and is all in all a kick ass author and thinker. but he takes his time , he does. so in this new venture for him, kind of popular noir hist fic he uses his same techniques, huge character development and historical backdrops goes pretty slow at times, but works if you stick with it, but also could have been cut by 100 pages or so. but tell me, are YOU going to tell robert olen butler which pages to cut?! hah no. he has a 2nd "kit marlowe cobb" now, where said reporter slash spy/detective is on the lusitania, opps, trading his spurs for a life vest. The Star of Istanbul: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller
olen butler is exalted professor at florida st uni, has written gobs of lit fic, won a pulitzer in 1992 for these short stories Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories and is all in all a kick ass author and thinker. but he takes his time , he does. so in this new venture for him, kind of popular noir hist fic he uses his same techniques, huge character development and historical backdrops goes pretty slow at times, but works if you stick with it, but also could have been cut by 100 pages or so. but tell me, are YOU going to tell robert olen butler which pages to cut?! hah no. he has a 2nd "kit marlowe cobb" now, where said reporter slash spy/detective is on the lusitania, opps, trading his spurs for a life vest. The Star of Istanbul: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller
November 22, 2017
Picked this one up at the Bowdoin library from the new book shelves. Never heard of the author but I like westerns and mysteries and this guy won a Pulitzer so... Probably will start tomorrow night. Very busy today and tonight.
Making some slow progress due to working a lot lately. Butler seems like a capable enough writer - he did win a Pulitzer - but as others have noted he takes his time getting "into" the so-called mystery. So far a solid 3* but no more.
The cover image, which first drew my attention to the book, is photo-shopped... too bad.
The plot continues to unfold at a leisurely pace with some serious violence thrown in. We're on a long train ride right now. I looked it up on a map. Vera Cruz to Torreon via Mexico City ...
Maybe I'll finish tonight. Something I've noticed ... the author seems to be trying to dress up what is essentially a pulp/adventure/western with fancy writing. This reminds me of Denis Johnson's "Nobody Move" but emotionally flatter. The hero is kind of a cipher. Who is he??? The evolving state of Kit's political consciouness vis-a-vis the USA and Mexico is kind of interesting, though. Viva Mexico!
Finished last night with a few twits and turns. The one about Mom is a whopper. Otherwise the side Mom-plot is mostly a distraction. Now it's a connection to the next book, if there ever is one. Anyway... my opinion hasn't changed. It's OK; a solid 3.25. The big escape ride from Torreon to Laredo is glossed over as if it was nothing. Cormac McCarthy might have made a lot of it but I'll bet ROB's editor(s) cut it out if it was in the original story. Too bad.
Making some slow progress due to working a lot lately. Butler seems like a capable enough writer - he did win a Pulitzer - but as others have noted he takes his time getting "into" the so-called mystery. So far a solid 3* but no more.
The cover image, which first drew my attention to the book, is photo-shopped... too bad.
The plot continues to unfold at a leisurely pace with some serious violence thrown in. We're on a long train ride right now. I looked it up on a map. Vera Cruz to Torreon via Mexico City ...
Maybe I'll finish tonight. Something I've noticed ... the author seems to be trying to dress up what is essentially a pulp/adventure/western with fancy writing. This reminds me of Denis Johnson's "Nobody Move" but emotionally flatter. The hero is kind of a cipher. Who is he??? The evolving state of Kit's political consciouness vis-a-vis the USA and Mexico is kind of interesting, though. Viva Mexico!
Finished last night with a few twits and turns. The one about Mom is a whopper. Otherwise the side Mom-plot is mostly a distraction. Now it's a connection to the next book, if there ever is one. Anyway... my opinion hasn't changed. It's OK; a solid 3.25. The big escape ride from Torreon to Laredo is glossed over as if it was nothing. Cormac McCarthy might have made a lot of it but I'll bet ROB's editor(s) cut it out if it was in the original story. Too bad.
January 17, 2013
Christopher Marlowe Cobb ("Kit" to his friends) is an American war correspondent of a stature almost comparable to that of Richard Harding Davis. He is in Vera Cruz covering the narrowly-focused American seizure of that port city on Mexico's coast in 1914.The American occupation was a response to the presence of a German vessel carrying arms and munitions. A revolution has been raging for several years in Mexico, and a number of provincial leaders aspire to be more than that, chief among them Pancho Villa. When Cobb learns that the Germans are sending an agent to contact Villa, he follows the agent both to get a tremendous story and to protect his own country's interests (a bit to his surprise). The German agent is dangerous, and at least one American agent has died at the hands of the Germans.
Kit Cobb has more than journalistic skills. His mother is a major stage actress, and he grew up largely in the theater, so he has some dramatic skills to draw on. He uses them to great effect, and his shadowing of the German agent on a train bound for Villa's part of Mexico is interesting and suspenseful.
What slows the action is Kit's backstory involving his mother's career, his relationship with her, and his questions about his unknown father. Those parts of the book gets tedious, but I tended to read through those sections fairly quickly and paid closer attention to the historical context and Butler's descriptions of revolutionary Mexico. They boosted the book from 3 stars to 4, though it was close.
Kit Cobb has more than journalistic skills. His mother is a major stage actress, and he grew up largely in the theater, so he has some dramatic skills to draw on. He uses them to great effect, and his shadowing of the German agent on a train bound for Villa's part of Mexico is interesting and suspenseful.
What slows the action is Kit's backstory involving his mother's career, his relationship with her, and his questions about his unknown father. Those parts of the book gets tedious, but I tended to read through those sections fairly quickly and paid closer attention to the historical context and Butler's descriptions of revolutionary Mexico. They boosted the book from 3 stars to 4, though it was close.
July 29, 2016
This was good enough to read to the end. With the author noted to have won a Pulitzer Prize, I suppose we are meant to take this story of Mexico and Pancho Villa in the Woodrow Wilson part of the 20th century as one in keeping with the facts as we now understand them. The protagonist, a newspaper reporter named Cobb, is believable enough and keeps us close enough to the action to make turning the pages interesting. Some of the plot devices are a bit too pat -- oh, really, there's a mysterious sexy lady introduced in chapter one? -- but at least the setting is one that has not been overdone.
I was surprised to learn this was the FIRST book in the series for Cobb; some of the lines taken, for example his persistent obsession with his mother, already felt like they were being fulfilled out of a sense of obligation, like this is how we established his character in the first two or three books, so we've got to keep doing it now.
Also I would like to caution any writer of blurbs to appear on the backs of books NEVER to invoke the name of Flashman unless there's something like Flashman inside the book. Because in this one, there's not.
I was surprised to learn this was the FIRST book in the series for Cobb; some of the lines taken, for example his persistent obsession with his mother, already felt like they were being fulfilled out of a sense of obligation, like this is how we established his character in the first two or three books, so we've got to keep doing it now.
Also I would like to caution any writer of blurbs to appear on the backs of books NEVER to invoke the name of Flashman unless there's something like Flashman inside the book. Because in this one, there's not.
October 1, 2012
In 1914, newspaper war correspondent Christopher Marlowe Cobb, "Kit" goes to Mexico to write a story about that country's civil war.
President Huerta became the country's leader in a questionable manner and Poncho Villa, who had been a gangster, formed an army to oppose Huerta.
Kit wants to write a story about Villa.
As he awaits his opportunity, he spots a German coming in from a German ammunition boat and Kit wonders why the man is so secretive.
As Kit is waiting for a chance, he falls in love with a Mexican laundress who is hiding something.
Kit is a swashbuckling type who doesn't mind grabbing a gun to fight his way out of a difficult situation and even ends up as part of Poncho Villa's men as they were in a surprise battle.
The story is written in a literary manner. There are good descriptions of the Mexican countryside and keen dialogue. I was entertained by the short history about Mexico. The plot is compelling and the conclusion is highly satisfactory.
President Huerta became the country's leader in a questionable manner and Poncho Villa, who had been a gangster, formed an army to oppose Huerta.
Kit wants to write a story about Villa.
As he awaits his opportunity, he spots a German coming in from a German ammunition boat and Kit wonders why the man is so secretive.
As Kit is waiting for a chance, he falls in love with a Mexican laundress who is hiding something.
Kit is a swashbuckling type who doesn't mind grabbing a gun to fight his way out of a difficult situation and even ends up as part of Poncho Villa's men as they were in a surprise battle.
The story is written in a literary manner. There are good descriptions of the Mexican countryside and keen dialogue. I was entertained by the short history about Mexico. The plot is compelling and the conclusion is highly satisfactory.
June 23, 2017
You know how some lines or images from novels stick with you for a long time? That's the beauty of literature. That's why we read. It takes us places we've never been and introduces us to the most private lives of people we will never meet. And our little day-to-day worlds expand. In this book there are many memorable images. Like the description of a character's eyes as being the color of mountain lion shit. Or like when the typewriter went ding at an extremely crucial moment. These both made me smile. There were a lot of points during this book when I was literally cringing...and actually fearing what comes next. It's no classic, and it didn't change my life, but I sure enjoyed this journey with Cobb.
May 10, 2013
This book started out OK, but got bad quickly. Very wordy and full of non relevant patriotic crap. The action was mostly familiar cliches. I skip read but it did not improve. Somehow I finished it but I don't know why. Too bad because the Mexican revolution and Pacha Villa is an interesting subject.
June 7, 2019
jingoist, school-boy adventure story sprinkled with obscenities and some casual colonial sex. But well written.
January 12, 2019
Lots of spoilers!!
This novel is not bad, but uneven. Butler is a literary author (Pulitzer Prize!) trying to write a thriller, but it's not quite paced as a thriller. It is slower. The literary elements exploring the inner life of the hero are actually pretty interesting and well done, but the book seems most interesting to me in its middle section, which blends this element with action.
Early on the book is a little farfetched, including a female Mexican sniper who is way more accurate than any person ever could be in real life, except possibly on a range with no wind and carefully measured distances. (Nope. On reflection, not even then. Also, we never learn where she acquired her skill, so far as I can tell.) She is one of two women who yield up their persons to our hero, both rather unconvincingly. He's not that hot a ticket, and one love interest would have been enough, anyway.
Later on the novel is obviously rushing to get to its conclusion.
The book also suffers from what I call "conservation of villains." That is, on two occasions our hero spares the life of someone who had tried to kill him, which makes one suspect that the hero will have to kill that villain again later, thus keeping the plot rolling. In one case, this turns out to be the case; in the other, not, which really is a failure in craft. One character could have filled both roles, as with the doubled love interests. Instead we get two villains who are essentially the same guy. Also, unlike in top-flight thrillers, the bad guys are relatively easily disposed of rather than dogging the hero's steps throughout, only to be disposed of at the end more satisfyingly.
Oh, and these two Germans are not-too-smart bad guys in the run-up to WWI. Bloodthirsty. Humorless, also. Who would have suspected?
Best features of the book are a couple of characters, a Mexican street kid with too much sense of initiative who serves as a cat's paw for the hero (and has to be rescued from villain #1 after disobeying instructions and getting into trouble) and an American soldier of fortune alongside of whom our hero fights an exciting skirmish--and who leads our hero to a meeting with Pancho Villa! Again Butler's strengths as a literary author are showing. Both these characters are present for only part of the book but probably at least the kid should have been present throughout, providing plot complication (and humor). The villain(s) should have been similarly complex, also. As I mentioned above they seem rather stereotyped.
The hero's transition from hardboiled newpaperman to U.S. government secret agent is another strong element, by the way. Ditto the picture of America (and Mexico) in the nineteen teens.
Over all, there are a few too many film-script-like elements to this, stuff that would fly on screen with a movie's faster pacing but that don't quite make sense in the slower canvas of a novel. I have read the fourth novel also, set during WWI, and it had way too many coincidences. I'll read at least one more and report back.
This novel is not bad, but uneven. Butler is a literary author (Pulitzer Prize!) trying to write a thriller, but it's not quite paced as a thriller. It is slower. The literary elements exploring the inner life of the hero are actually pretty interesting and well done, but the book seems most interesting to me in its middle section, which blends this element with action.
Early on the book is a little farfetched, including a female Mexican sniper who is way more accurate than any person ever could be in real life, except possibly on a range with no wind and carefully measured distances. (Nope. On reflection, not even then. Also, we never learn where she acquired her skill, so far as I can tell.) She is one of two women who yield up their persons to our hero, both rather unconvincingly. He's not that hot a ticket, and one love interest would have been enough, anyway.
Later on the novel is obviously rushing to get to its conclusion.
The book also suffers from what I call "conservation of villains." That is, on two occasions our hero spares the life of someone who had tried to kill him, which makes one suspect that the hero will have to kill that villain again later, thus keeping the plot rolling. In one case, this turns out to be the case; in the other, not, which really is a failure in craft. One character could have filled both roles, as with the doubled love interests. Instead we get two villains who are essentially the same guy. Also, unlike in top-flight thrillers, the bad guys are relatively easily disposed of rather than dogging the hero's steps throughout, only to be disposed of at the end more satisfyingly.
Oh, and these two Germans are not-too-smart bad guys in the run-up to WWI. Bloodthirsty. Humorless, also. Who would have suspected?
Best features of the book are a couple of characters, a Mexican street kid with too much sense of initiative who serves as a cat's paw for the hero (and has to be rescued from villain #1 after disobeying instructions and getting into trouble) and an American soldier of fortune alongside of whom our hero fights an exciting skirmish--and who leads our hero to a meeting with Pancho Villa! Again Butler's strengths as a literary author are showing. Both these characters are present for only part of the book but probably at least the kid should have been present throughout, providing plot complication (and humor). The villain(s) should have been similarly complex, also. As I mentioned above they seem rather stereotyped.
The hero's transition from hardboiled newpaperman to U.S. government secret agent is another strong element, by the way. Ditto the picture of America (and Mexico) in the nineteen teens.
Over all, there are a few too many film-script-like elements to this, stuff that would fly on screen with a movie's faster pacing but that don't quite make sense in the slower canvas of a novel. I have read the fourth novel also, set during WWI, and it had way too many coincidences. I'll read at least one more and report back.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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