In the Heat [Hardcover]

Ian Vasquez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 10, 2008

Boxer Miles Young thinks he’s got one more shot in him before it’s time to hang up the gloves for good. He may be the only one who thinks so. The truth is, he enjoys the recognition his career has brought him at home, in the small Latin American country of Belize, and he’s worried about how he’ll support his daughter once it’s over. So when his promoter comes to him with a proposition that includes one last big fight, he listens.

Isabelle Gilmore wants Miles to find her daughter, who’s run off with some of her mother’s money and her no-good boyfriend. Isabelle’s afraid Rian’s going to marry the kid, the only son of corrupt ex--police chief Marlon Tablada, and she wants Rian---and the money---found. In return, Miles gets put on a fight card with a $30,000 payday.

He’s reluctant, but Isabelle thinks a hometown hero can get people to talk in ways a private investigator can’t. Trouble is, before he can find Rian, he learns that there’s much more to Isabelle, her daughter, and Marlon than Isabelle let on.

Clearly at home in the world of hardboiled crime writing, debut novelist Ian Vasquez is a bright new talent who infuses In the Heat with a steamy, exotic voice all his own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of Vasquez's promising first novel, which is set in Belize, fading boxer Miles Young is planning to hang up his gloves and dedicate himself to raising his small daughter, Lani. Then he receives an offer too good to pass up—the chance to fight ex-champ Hakeem Wahen in Florida in three weeks if he'll agree to help Isabelle Gilmore, an attractive well-to-do woman, find her missing 17-year-old daughter, Rian. Besides decamping with her undesirable boyfriend, the son of a corrupt former police inspector, Rian has taken a load of cash from her mother. Isabelle claims her interest in locating Rian is purely maternal, but Young suspects she has been less than honest with him. An inexperienced gumshoe, Young winds up paying dearly for his involvement in the case. While the story ends somewhat predictably, Vasquez, who grew up in Belize, does a good job of conveying his native country's underbelly and making Young a credible, if flawed, figure. (June)
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From Booklist

Aging boxers turned sleuths just could be a crime-fiction trend. First we had welterweight Eddie Caro in David Fulmer’s The Blue Door (2008), set in 1950s Philadelphia, and now, from a different hemisphere, we have Miles Young, an aging heavyweight in contemporary Belize. Eddie knows he’s done after a particularly tough loss and takes up sleuthing on the rebound, but Miles is looking for one more payday and agrees to help a rich woman find her missing teenage daughter as a way of paying the fight promoter. Naturally, the case turns out to be more complicated than first appears—the girl and her boyfriend have absconded with a wad of cash belonging to a local gangster—and soon enough Miles is in well over his head. Subplots involving Miles’ estranged wife and his young daughter—as well as the coming-of-age traumas of the runaway teens—add heft, but this is a straight-ahead, hard-boiled detective story overlaid with superb atmosphere. The Belize setting puts Caribbean noir on the genre map—think Florida without the neon, or an ever-so-slightly-less-bent version of Kent Harrington’s Tijuana (in Dia de los Muertos, 1997). --Bill Ott

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; First Edition edition (June 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312378092
• ISBN-13: 978-0312378097
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,393,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

IAN VASQUEZ, a copy editor at the St. Petersburg Times, received his MFA while working on a psychiatric ward and counseling at-risk high school students. Raised in Belize, he now lives near Tampa, Florida with his family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun, compelling mystery set in Central America with boxing gumshoe, June 16, 2008

By 

Mikhail Natopov "Major reader" (Maine) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Heat (Hardcover)

I love Graham Greene's novels not just because of their psychological depth but mostly because he knows how to evoke a setting and a time -- you feel the heat, hear the mosquitos, and taste the gin and bitters his characters drink in Panama, Africa, Europe.

Ian Vasquez -- tho this is his first novel -- has that gift for setting, and in this case it is in Belize, strangely enough an english-speaking Central American country, but with all the heat and atmospherics of a Greene novel. It has as well some of the same engaging, rich desperation of a character at the end of his useful career, struggling to manage a broken family and a failing boxing career by taking on one more big fight that he may or may not be able to handle, and an investigation into a missing person that he is probably unprepared for.

So it is a rich and compelling story that reads easily and successfully mixes the hot sweat of a training gym and the cold sweat of fear. Hard not to like this gem from a first-time writer, I hope he comes back with another.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective", July 17, 2010

By 

D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: In the Heat (Hardcover)

There are two primary reasons to read "In the Heat": its main character, has-been boxer Miles Young, and its setting, the Caribbean port town of Belize City. Miles, a single father concerned about his lack of a financial future, takes on the unlikely job of a private eye: he is hired by a wealthy woman to hunt down her runaway daughter. What ultimately attracts Miles to the job is not just the money (although he could use it) but also the promise of one last big boxing match in Florida. His tenacious, good-guy demeanor ultimately sets him up as a chump caught in the middle of a battle among several toughs who specialize in laundering money and trafficking drugs.

Miles makes for an unlikely detective. For starters, he has no idea what he's doing: "I'll play detective in the afternoon," reserving mornings for training, he tells his manager Sammy (as Scottish novelist John Buchan wrote, "Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective"). Unsurprisingly, his first attempt to pump the locals for information results in both a clumsy announcement to the bad guys and an embarrassing haircut.

We also see the story from the perspective of the missing girl; so, without a corpse or even an unsolved crime (despite vague reports concerning a recent underworld murder near the Mexican border), there's no real whodunit. The novel is closer to a whydunit; we gradually realize that there's more to the girl's disappearance than a vain, muscular boyfriend and some missing family money--although we find out most of the answers long before the body count begins. And, natch, there's also a love interest for our down-and-out boxer, but Miles's well-meaning attempts at courting are about as smooth as his skills as a detective.

The plot, then, is fairly standard stuff; many of the bad guys are somewhat doltish and interchangeable, and the inevitable violence is predictably riveting. What gives "In The Heat" its distinctive flavor, however, is the tropical urban atmosphere of Belize: its people, its verandahs, its hangouts, its traffic, its rhythms, its heat. The novel is at its best when describing the capital, with its population of less than 100,000 (small by any urban standard). Miles travels among friends and familiar faces, back alleys and "chockablock houses" that he knows like the back of his glove. Vasquez is less successful, however, at describing the locale when the story leaves the city. There are scattered references to banyan trees, thatched ceilings, hammocks, and the "jungle humidity," but the tourist resort and farm cabin serving as hideouts for the "missing" girl and her boyfriend could be in virtually any tropical location. Then again, you might be too busy following the hapless young couple on the run, with Miles hot in pursuit, to pay much attention to the scenery.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended 5-Star Mystery from New Author, July 8, 2008

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Heat (Hardcover)

In the Heat is a mystery by newcomer Ian Vasquez that is set in Belize. Miles Young is a boxer who has just lost a come back match. He is offered a job that will not only pay well, but give him an opportunity for another try at a come back. He is asked to find seventeen-year-old Rian Gilmore, who has run off with Joey Tablada.

It doesn't sound like too hard a task and the pay off is good. Miles wants a solid pay day so he can care for his daughter. Nothing in this case is quite what it seems. Trying to find this missing girl has made waves- and people are looking for him. Miles finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place. Yet this boxer is not ready to go down for the count.

I enjoyed the rhythm of the this story with its well-crafted dialog and interesting people. Miles is a single father who is trying to find time to train and look for Rian without taking precious time from his daughter. While we follow Miles through his days, we also learn a great deal about Belize, which is almost another character in the story. The resolution of the story is satisfying without being too easy.

This book is well worth picking up even if it is for the sole purpose of meeting the complex character of Miles, who as a boxer is always hoping for that one more fight, and yet still raises his daughter with love and compassion..

Armchair Interviews says: Good storytelling with a main character who really cares about his daughter.