The Devil Takes You Home by Iglesias Gabino
Iglesias Gabino’s The Devil Take You Home was
recommended to me in several areas, and after reading the description, I was
looking forward to reading it. I was surprised by the level of violence in this
book, but it was also one of the aspects of the book that was appealing to me.
The book tells the story of Mario, a man who falls into significant debt due to
his daughter’s cancer. This illness and her death eventually leave him in debt
and desperate, divorced from his wife, and not sure where to go next. His
situation reminded me of the Bruce Springsteen song “Atlantic City”, where he’s
got debts no honest man can pay, leading him to consider crime and desperate
measures. This leads Mario to a job to hijack a money drop to a cartel with
some other questionable characters. I absolutely loved this book, and it made
me want to read some of Gabino’s other books. The story is propulsive,
travelling along the Texas desert, leading to the border, where Mario and his
team encounter many strange and unsavory characters from the criminal
underworld. Gabino’s story, full of tension and anticipation, kept me reading
to find out what was going to happen next. The book combines elements of crime,
mystery, and horror or the supernatural, making a compelling concoction for
consumption. I loved the strange and violent characters that Mario encounters,
and Gabino’s descriptions of them and their fates was well done. There probably
are not going to be any other Mario stories, but I would love to read some
prologues about the kinds of activities he was involved in prior to this job;
if that is not an option, I hope to read other Gabino books as he is a great
crime and noir writer, who combines elements of the supernatural and folklore
to create this kind of engaging and unique mystery.
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