Customer Reviews

Goodbye Mexico

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I spend a lot of time reading nonfiction books related to government conspiracies, government corruption, government bungling, and the malfeasance of government officials. You know, just basic government. But every so often, all that basic government will cause my eyes to get glassy, my brain to turn to Jello (blue raspberry), and my sense of right and wrong to become blurred. When that occurs, I know it's time to take a little break; which I just did recently by reading GOODBYE MEXICO, a work of fiction about government conspiracies, government corruption, government bungling, and the malfeasance of government officials. Boy, do I feel refreshed!

The cover of GOODBYE MEXICO says it was written by a guy named Phillip Jennings. That's where reality stops and the outrageous, satirical adventures and misadventures in mad, covert operations begin. It's a story of subterfuge built upon the sturdy foundation of government intelligence, counterintelligence, double-crossings, triple-crossings, and burro crossings. And unfortunately for Jack Armstrong, the self-professed "Mama's boy" and former Marine attempting to do his duty as a CIA agent while maintaining a relatively calm life, the individual trying to direct all of this insanity - in a sense, playing "The Crossing Guard" - is Armstrong's old Marine buddy, "that damn Gearheardt."

Gearheardt is (so to speak) back from the dead and working with the CIA (kinda, sorta) and cooking up a plan in Mexico to oust Castro from Cuba in order to turn the country over to internacional prostitutas. Meanwhile, other factions have other intentions for Cuba and Gearheardt doesn't know the difference between a pinata and a Chihuahua. (Hell, EVERYONE knows that the dog yelps when you hit it with the stick!) As the plot thickens, even the ordinarily super-cool, super-calm, and super-collected wiseazz, Gearheardt, is a bit troubled by his inability to keep things straight: "Don't you hate the missions where you have a bunch of people lined up to assassinate someone and then everything gets mixed up and no one knows who's killing who?"

If this all sounds "over-the-top", it IS! Imagine something like the movie DR. STRANGELOVE Or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB and then ramp up the Farce Factor two or three times. (Yeah, you read that correctly; I said "ramp it up", not "tone it down.") It's "over-the-top" like going over Niagra Falls in a barrel with sharp objects, a screaming woman, and a laughing hyena! Hmmm ... Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, on page 165 of GOODBYE MEXICO.

Or, to mix my metaphors, GOODBYE MEXICO reminded me of being on the Mad Tea Cup ride at Disneyland: while the cup is spinning wildly, it is simultaneously moving in a predetermined direction. In other words, it is not out of control, but merely seems that way. Much like the Earth itself I might add: while it is spinning around its global axis at about 1,000 miles an hour, it is also rotating around the Sun - it has a plan, a purpose! (Which reminds me ... did you ever consider that while they sit fascinated by the sight of cars racing around the INDY 500 track at about 160 miles an hour, the spectators in the stands are themselves turning more than five times faster?)

While GOODBYE MEXICO is often riotously funny, I did encounter a couple of problems with it: There are times when the story calls for a genuine emotional reaction, but I don't think I can be expected to laugh at an absurd satire and then later, when things turn serious, to invest enough belief in the story to experience anything resembling authentic empathy. A story with characters and situations this far removed from what we deem to be reality necessarily sacrifices its ability to evoke pathos.

As I recently said to someone (who shall remain nameless because I don't want you to know that I associate with such people), something minor, but which also negatively impacted my enjoyment, is that I think I pretty much reached my saturation point with "Tough Chick" stories more than ten years ago. It seems as if that's all we ever get anymore and -- along with the ubiquitous "guy taking a shot to the family jewels" gag that rarely gets left out of any Hollywood movie or TV production -- I've had more than enough of it. The "Warrior Babe" is an exaggerated character type that I've grown weary of seeing. Additionally, GOODBYE MEXICO was a bit too outlandish and perhaps a shade too bawdy for my own tastes, but those things are subjective.

Although I might not be GOODBYE MEXICO's ideal reader, undoubtedly there is a large audience out there for it. For one thing, any woman who's ever felt the desire to castrate a man for any reason will surely find that GOODBYE MEXICO gets her rocks off. Uhm ... well, you know what I mean. Or you will. The story is frantically-funny and fast-paced; the plot has more "twists" than a bartender in a busy cocktail lounge; the principal protagonists (especially "that damn Gearheardt" who reminds me a lot of one of my own good friends from the past) are wonderfully drawn; and the insane denouement to the insane labyrinth of intrigues is probably nothing short of a stroke of genius - wickedly humorous and absolutely apropos.

GOODBYE MEXICO is a dizzying, Mad Cup of Tea, and if you're going to climb into bed with spies, revolutionaries, counterrevolutionaries, and angry pr*stitutes, then consider yourself forewarned. Until our next rendezvous under the cover of darkness and Satire with a capital "S", this is Mr. Nada Zilch (a.k.a. Agent Double-"OH!" Zero) saying, "ADIOS, MUCHACHOS Y MUCHACHAS."

So, here we have a story that makes Alice's adventures seem like a day in the stacks at your favorite graduate library. Phillip Jennings brings us a further adventure of Jack Armstrong, this time in Mexico not long after America's mis-adventures in Vietnam ended with a makeshift helipad on the rooftop of 22 Gia Long Street in Saigon. Jack Armstrong is feeling pretty good about himself being appointed as the Chief of Station without knowing much Spanish. He rationalizes that his talents were finally recognized and the powers above him decided he could learn all he needs to know on the job.

Soon, his pal Gearheardt shows up. If you have read Nam-A-Rama (and if you haven't, you should), you know the relationship these two have and what happens to Armstrong when Gearheardt involves him in his plans. Armstrong genuinely considers Gearheardt his best friend, a genius, a maniac, a patriot, and someone who is always working unseen and unknowable angles. It isn't that we go through the looking glass as much as we enter a house of mirrors and try to run through all of them at once.

There is little point in my trying to summarize the plot for you because it involves so many possibilities that I would not only be spoiling your fun, but shortchanging the story because I failed to chart out all the possibilities as I was reading it. Without such detailed reference materials I am sure I would make a false turn and then where would we all be?

However, it involves a possible assassination, a possible overthrow of Mexico or maybe Cuba or both, Chapultepec Castle, an innovation in the CIA called the Blame-o-matic(tm) that was dreamt up by an enigmatic three foot tall goat roasting man known as the Pygmy, a top quality international intelligence agency known as the ISP, the Vatican, a burro riding bible thumping replacement as chief of station who has a problem with the revealing attire of Armstrong's secretary, Juanita Sanchez, several paid assassins of varying ocular acuity, bombs, guns, a nudist named Marta who has to room with Jack Armstrong, a brothel named Las Palomas, something to do with Palenque, Club Tristeza, the Model 156 Doomsday De-nutter, a huge cast of prostitutes (not all to be found working in the brothels) and, as they say, much much more.

It is hilariously funny, and the more you like absurdity, the more you will enjoy the satire of this book. Phillip Jennings has written another brilliant novel that is as good as and might be better than the first. Gearheardt is a marvelous character and his relationship to Jack Armstrong is one you will always remember. All the characters in the story are wonderfully drawn and fulfill their roles in the plots superbly.

Brilliant.

If you like your books with little discernable plot but interesting characters, then Jennings' books, this one and his first, Nam-A-Rama, are for you. Beginning with Gearhardt and Jack Armstrong in VietNam and later in Mexico, Jennings takes his two "heroes" through wild-and-wooly adventures, with everyone from Ho Chi Minh to various "Wild Bill" Donovan wanna-be's.

Read the two books in the order they were written. I thought Nam-a-Rama a slightly better book, but maybe that's because I'm more interested in Viet Nam than in Mexico.

Intellegence gathered from a completely disreputable source in B-stan suggests that Jennings is writing at least one, and possibly two, more books in the series. The next installment has Gearhardt and Jack's mother eloping in some kind of Harold and Maude over-under action, Can't wait.

Nam A Rama struck me for its therapeutic power, not in the current psycho-babblish way but more like the way those ancient Greek guys handled tragedy, loss, violence and the all `round mendacity and stupidity of the human race. Goodbye Mexico has all of those same elements, including the slapstick humor (although fans will have to be patient to the end). But it affects me more as a man's book than a philosophical one. A man's manual. On how to be crazy, confused, mendacious at times, even cruel, but never without honor and what the British elite used to call noblesse oblige.

Of course Gearheardt is back - with a vengeance. And Jack Morrison also returns as his foil. But arguably the most outstanding character this go around is Marta. I love Marta. I am in love with Marta. I love her in the Platonic sense. I also love her lustfully, artfully, physically. I lie awake at night thinking about Marta. About how wonderfully we could be together. How we could remake the world together.

Man is lost without woman. Without Beauty. Without the Beauty that woman represents. Without mystery and contradiction and tension. All of which is embodied in woman. Man is stupid, ignorant and lazy. Woman is complex, artful in her essence, hard working. Man is free to roam and scavenge and generally screw off. Woman is trapped in her own fate. Man philosophizes. Woman acts to preserve herself. But what about the two together?

Goodbye Mexico will make Joyce Carrol Oates very happy. It will provide ample material for one of her graduate seminars in literary/psychosexual deconstruction. But Jennings has already done all the deconstructing of man and woman that is necessary and has found power in that elusive elemental relationship. Woman is honest. And the most honest of woman is the [...]e. She tells you right up front what the deal is. So Jennings proposes this: why not prostitution as the best model for business and politics? Anyone who has dabbled in either or both can attest to the fact that you are inevitably going to get the weenie at some point when you least expect it. So why can't we just be up front about it from the beginning? And why not use prostitutes to change the world? Jesus did...

With all that said, I have it on good authority (a clandestine website that was very quickly expunged by the Department of Homeland Security) that Goodbye Mexico is not a work of fiction at all. It is the latest CIA FMP (field manual/provisional). And this is a trial balloon to see how public opinion will react to a new, more innovative approach to intelligence gathering. As a post-9/11 man, I say give it a try! That goes for women too, whatever you are.

Phil Jennings has scored another winner with Goodbye Mexico, a sequel to Nam-A-Rama. Both are wonderful satires that will keep you laughing at the antics of the lead characters.

"Don't you hate the missions where you have a bunch of people lined up to assassinate someone and then everything gets mixed up and no one knows who's killing who?" - Gearhardt, Goodbye Mexico

Jack Armstrong has been appointed Chief of Station in Mexico City. His vanity overtakes his humility when he fails to recognize that the only reason he could have been appointed to such a post without knowing a lick of Spanish is not that his skills as a CIA agent are second-to-none, but rather must be in some way connected to the facts that (1) his old pal Gearhardt has pulled some strings to place him exactly there, in that position, in Mexico City, at precisely that time, (2) the near future will involve being instrumental in some sort of international conspiracy plot devised by Gearhardt, like, say, for instance, assassinating the president of Mexico and taking over Cuba (while blaming the whole thing on the "bad" Cubans to help out the "good" Cubans), and (3) there will be members of a litany of factions, organizations and countries involved in this plot, including, but not limited to, the good Cubans, the bad Cubans, the Russians, the CIA, the Mexicans, the Colombians, and an errant pygmy or two.

On the subject of The Pygmy, Jennings writes:

"The Pygmy was a legendary CIA agent. A three-foot bronze man who often wore small animal skins and when stressed spoke by making clicking sounds in this throat. The smell of his cooking fires permeated CIA headquarters at Langley. He alternately bounded and crept through the halls of the Agency. As he rose up through the ranks, he developed a small but loyal following, reportedly assembling his own army of dedicated Pygmy troops, whom he used for his own black operations. And they were also a softball team." (p. 35)

Whether Jack will ever come face-to-face with the Pygmy remains a mystery throughout most of the novel; likewise, Jack's ignorance of his present and future situation continues even after Gearhardt shows up and begins to give details of his, or, rather, theirmission. This is because Gearhardt unravels the facts of the plan on a need-to-know basis, throwing in some occasional curve balls when the plan involves Gearhardt's making Jack need-to-know something that isn't true so that he will act in a certain way. As such, the plan unravels with clues and red herrings something like a mystery novel, to both Jack and the reader.

Gearhardt, the ex-marine turned renegade CIA operative who gets his information via teletype from an international network of bordellos and massage parlors, is a comic masterpiece as a character; something of a wisecracking, womanizing Hawkeye Pierce with his zero tolerance for authority, sprinkled with a touch of James Bond and his charms that enable him to cement international connections wherever he steps foot, topped off with a dab of Rambo's ability to handle himself and his need for a mission that involves overwhelming firepower, and covered finally with a Teflon-like layer of cartoonesque bulletproofness.

Phillip Jennings' GoodBye Mexico, his sequel to the 2005 Vietnam farce Nam-A-Rama, is a terrifically funny romp through the world of international espionage, covert operations and nation building. Will the Sisterhood of Prostitutes make all of Cuba a red-light district? Will the "good" Cubans take over Mexico? Or will the Catholic Church take over Cuba? The answers may even surprise Gearhardt.

There was a time in this country when subversive or suggestive books would be tossed atop a smoldering stack of half-melted Elvis records and burned in the church parking lot. Though it tended to dampen first printing sales, this Joan of Arc Phenomenon--as cultural historians would come to call it--gave the writer of said charred book the wonderful gift of longevity. Generations of readers would find it on the 'Banned Books' table while strolling through Barnes & Noble or read about it and other incinerated materials in Esquire magazine. The obvious result would be a long life, guaranteed by the match-happy Puritans who tried to keep it out of innocents' hands all those years ago.

Well, perhaps it's time to resurrect book burning. I say this because I have it on good authority Goodbye Mexico--which the author himself says struggled to see daylight--was held-up in publication because it was felt his first and highly-praised book undersold. This led to a war of biblical proportions over how to present the second book, just as good if not better than the first, to save it from a similar fate.

That one such book could languish is unthinkable, but two? More than I can handle. So I'm calling on readers of all stripes to fill their preachers' heads with stories of Goodbye Mexico's positive portrayal of prostitutes, its naked agents, its anti-government tendencies and--perhaps most impressive of all--its man-on-burro action. Perhaps then, if the streets run black with charred bits of Goodbye Mexico, this book will get its due.

The traditionalists among us should please see the exhaustive review below, with which I agree wholeheartedly--except for being stunningly off-target on the main character's name (it's Jack Armstrong, not Jack Morrison) and a slighty-creepy over-zealousness that would, if I were the author, convince me to keep my windows locked at night.

Goodbye Mexico might be perhaps the best book I've read in quite some time. Which, of course, makes it ripe for burning.