Customer Reviews

In the Heat

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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.

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.

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.

I loved reading In the Heat. Ian Vasquez is truly a master of precise language. Personally, I love a book with lots of dialog, and I wasn't disappointed. Best of all, the dialog was so easy to read and believable that I felt I was right there ... just the way I like it! Vasquez put some very funny expressions in the story, too... I laughed out loud. This book is a perfect balance of action and dialog. I feel certain that this is just the first in a long line of Ian Vasquez books. Just think, if you get this first one, you can join me in being able to say, "Yes, I remember reading Vasquez's first book, way back in 2008."

This book was a great, fast read. The first three pages totally drew me in, and then I was hooked. The main character, Miles, is engaging and believable, and I loved the local details about Belize.

The plot twists and turns throughout, the secondary characters are strong, and the ending totally satisfies. Buy it! You won't be sorry.

This book is excellent and quite suitable for young adults and adults because the main character Milo realizes his boxing career may be ending and now what? What happens is not what Milo expected and his wit is his key to surviving. In the Heat involves so much of what human beings endure and overcomes in life, from coping with the pain of mental illness, the impressionable teens who don't know their actions matter until something horrible happens, and the abusively domineering adults who influence their children. This book would be appropriate for young adults (15 & up), as there is just the right balance of language, violence and mild sensuality. I gave In the Heat to my 17 year old daughter to read and she then recommended it to one of her male friends. Finally, the setting in BZ takes the reader to another destination in the world, with just the right mix of the Belizean Creole dialect with context to suit. For many young adults, travel is hardly an option and reading about other destinations promotes interests in geography and social sciences.

If you like social mystery novels, I recommend In the Heat. The choices, consequences and mental challenges overcome by the characters are real. The not-so-perfect hero is both sympathetic and strong. I can't wait to read Lonesome Point!

Creatures from the Belize Lagoon:
Noir Mysteries from an Emerging New Belizean Talent

Reviews of Ian Vasquez' In the Heat and Lonesome Point

By LAN SLUDER

An important new talent has emerged out of the sands, swamps and condos of Florida, bringing a Belizean edge to crime novels some are calling Caribbean Noir.

Ian Vasquez, who was raised in Belize and now lives in the Tampa Bay area, where he is a copy editor at the St. Petersburg Times, has published two novels, In the Heat in 2008 and Lonesome Point in 2009. A third, Mr. Hooligan, is set for publication in summer 2010.

In the Heat is set entirely in Belize, mostly in Belize City with some of the action taking place at a jungle lodge in Cayo. Miles Young, an aging boxer coming off a loss of a bout at Bird's Isle, is hired to find the run-away 17-year-old daughter of Isabelle Gilmore, a wealthy, Caribbean Shores matron. The girl has taken a gob of mom's ill-gotten cash and is with the son of a former Belize police chief, now a well-connected owner of a Belize City security company. Soon, Miles is caught up in a tangled web of murder, corruption and money laundering. "Man, Belize was going to hell in a hand basket," says Manny, a shady boxing promoter.

Vasquez' second novel, Lonesome Point, takes place in Miami and Tampa, with flashbacks to Belize. Two Belizean brothers, Leo and Patrick Varela, though still bound together by a deadly family secret of their youth in Belize City, have drifted apart since they moved to South Florida. Patrick is a successful attorney and Miami-Dade County commissioner, with a beautiful home and trophy family in Biscayne Bay, while Leo is a would-be poet and night shift worker on a dead-end job in a hospital psych ward. One night, a figure out of Leo's Belizean past shows up and demands a favor of him: Get a patient, an old man with apparent schizophrenia, out of isolation to take a middle-of-the-night meeting. If Leo doesn't cooperate, things that happened at Lonesome Point in Belize may be brought to light. Soon, Leo is in the middle of a nightmare, on the run from his Belizean past, desperately trying to save the life of his pregnant girlfriend, the patient, and himself. Leo is hunted by his one-time Belizean pal, Freddy, along with Bernard, a hulking, 290-pound black weightlifter, and perhaps even by his brother Patrick.

I came to the two novels with the wrong expectations. Misled by blurbs comparing Vasquez to John D. McDonald, I was expecting Travis McGee transplanted to Belize. But Vasquez is his own man. Unlike the stories featuring McGee, Spenser, Marlowe, Millhone and some of the other classic heroes of mystery and crime fiction, Vasquez' tales are told in the third person, with omniscient narrators. His main characters are accidental detectives, rather than professionals. Instead of boldly forging ahead, like skiffs on the Caribbean, they are often buffeted by the winds of chance.

Lonesome Point, to be sure, is the more powerful of the two books. From the first to the second, you can see Vasquez' growth as a writer in the more complex plotting, easier handling of narrative and the harder, steel-cut dialog. Vasquez, now only in his early 40s, has the time to flower like a flamboyant tree in Belizean summer.

The weakness of both novels is in the main characters. In the Heat's protagonist, the washed-up boxer, Miles, is sketchily drawn and appears in surprisingly few scenes. Leo Varela, the knock-about in Lonesome Point who smokes weed to get through his night shift, is better, but in the end Leo doesn't have a lot of appeal, more victim than victor.

Several of the secondary characters, by contrast, are vividly painted. Isabelle, the bitchy, sexy Caribbean Shores matron of In the Heat, deserves a book of her own. Also in the first novel, Harry Rolles, an expat American deeply involved in Belize's dark underbelly of crime, cries out for a bigger, uh, roll. Marlon Tablada, In the Heat's corrupt ex-police chief, could have made a fascinating if amoral protagonist. The hulking Bernard in Lonesome Point easily could have carried the novel. Several of the other minor characters in both novels are sharply if quickly presented.

I also liked the measured way Vasquez uses the Belize setting. Exotic, colorful locations like New Orleans, or Belize, can overwhelm character and story line. Vasquez matter-of-factly names streets and landmarks in Belize, only once in a while getting things wrong (he suggests that the Macal flows west) but doesn't get lost in the Belizeness of it all. He recreates some of the patterns of Creole, and plants a word here or there, along with some Spanish and Spanglish but wisely doesn't make the Anglophone reader struggle to understand the language. Some of Vasquez' scenes, such as when Isabelle and the boxing promoter, Manny, are caught in bed by Isabelle's husband, who suffers from Alzheimer's, are dark but laugh-aloud funny.

But I digress. What's important here is that we have a new thriller writer on the scene, a Belizean published by a name New York publishing house, who very likely is going to become a major international crime writer. I'm eagerly awaiting his third novel.

I occasionally read "something", mostly because I feel like I should. Knowing Ian, and getting a signed copy, I figured I'ld better read it in case I ran into him and had to sound like I readed it!!! I could'nt put the damn thing down!!!

I'm a Belizean and am pretty familiar with the sites and sounds of the city. Reading the book I felt like I was really there. I know many people are saying that, but it's true. The small little details that most people would'nt notice are in here.

Many have broken the book down into parts so I wont bother. Suffice to say that this is essential reading for any one that has even vaguely been involved with Belize.

As for the writting style, I found myself invovled with the story. Don't know if that's because the sights, sound and smells described were a part of my upbringing, but it was compelling all the same, and kept be going into the nite.

Very enjoyable. Well done Ian.

From the minute I picked up this book I was addicted. There is no better way to describe my enthusiasm for this book.

The author describe the setting in such a vivid way that I felt that I was right there in Belize. I could feel the heat and breezed that Vasquez spoke of.

The main character, Miles, was described in such a way that I felt that I knew him, and could feel the struggles that he was going through.

This was a great book, perfect for a vacation. I look forward to the author's next book.

Miles Young--"former world-ranked contender in two divisions, former North American Boxing Federation middleweight champion, the best prize-fighter Belize has ever produced"--has just lost what is likely the final fight of his solid but unspectacular career. Now he faces the prospect of a retirement he can't afford, with no other marketable skills, and a young daughter he's raising on his own. The promoter of the last bout doesn't have the money he's owed, but does have a proposition. Isabelle Gilmore, a local businesswoman, needs someone to track down her teenage daughter, who's run off with the son of a powerful former Belizean cop and $10,000 in cash:

"[E]xplain to me now why I'm the man for the job?"

Isabelle said, "Three reasons. First, because you're Miles Young, national sports star. Like I said, Belize is a small place. Word gets around that you're looking for Joel Tablada, he might just show his face. Like, why is the boxer Miles Young looking for me? Second, because you're Miles Young, a boxer, and Joel is a personal trainer at the new gym out on Northern Highway. A boxer seeking the services of a personal trainer? That's reasonable to assume, nothing strange about that. Third, because you're Miles Young, and let's be honest, your name commands a certain respect on the streets."

Miles is reluctant but when the promoter offers him a fight with a former superstar champ, Hakeem Wahed, who is making a comeback, the job suddenly looks more attractive.

Boxers and ex-boxers have always been a staple of film noir--Body and Soul; The Killers; The Set-Up; 99 River Street; On the Waterfront; Fat City; The Harder They Fall; even Pulp Fiction--and hard-boiled private eye novels--like Robert Parker's Spenser series and Robert Randisi's Miles Jacoby books. The loneliness and brutality of the ring and the likelihood that a few too many blows to the head have impaired their judgment makes them naturals for the genre. So Ian Vasquez's choice of heroes is a nod to the classics. And the missing youths, cache of money, crooked cops, and brutal hoods are all familiar. But the exotic setting and Miles's single fatherhood are quite distinctive. The threat of violence always looms, but when bad things happen to Miles they're almost comic, including a genuinely funny incident where he gets a bad haircut. All in all, while Mr. Vasquez pays homage to his forebears he also manages to keep things fresh and Miles is an engaging, if stubborn and sometimes slow-witted, character. The wrap-up is a tad pat, as it seems Miles will escape further trouble despite actions that most have upset some real hard guys, but we like him well enough not to mind his good fortune and if the loose ends set up a subsequent adventure all the better. For now, it's a fine debut novel for Ian Vasquez.