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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heroes to root for and a fun, satisfying, action packed read!, June 22, 2010
This review is from: Strong Justice: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Hardcover)
In Strong Justice, Land returns to three key figures of Strong Enough To Die a few months later: Guillermo Paz, Cort Wesley, and Caitlan Strong.
Touched by Caitlin Strong's example, Guillermo Paz has returned to Mexico and tries to make amends for his past. Paz's willingness to protect the downtrodden won him a reputation that's part myth and part legend in his new town. Paz's admiration for Caitlin leads him to head North when he starts to suspect that she might be in grave danger.
Caitlin has been busy investigating the kidnapping of young women along the border between Texas and Mexico. While it first appears that the victims are young women entering illegally from Mexico and being forced into white slavery. As Caitlin traces the first disappearances to a particular small town, a disturbing pattern slowly emerges.
Meanwhile, Cort Wesley has been struggling to keep his family together. While Wesley's real and well deserved reputation for toughness has kept him safe, his reputation may cost him his sons. The social worker assigned to his case has been threatening to take away his children. Cort tries to convince Social Services that he should retain custody and that he is, in fact, a good father. Against his better judgment, circumstances force Cort to reach out to his former employers for the money he needs to raise his children.
When Cort's teenage son Dylan stumbles into trouble, he calls on Caitlin for help. Somehow Dylan, Cort, and Caitlin (and eventually Paz) find themselves facing unexpected and unnatural evils together.
Also, while on his way to help Caitlin, Paz researches Caitlin's grandfather, the legendary Earl Strong. Through flashbacks, correspondence, Texas Rangers archives, the memories of survivors and their descendants, and Caitlin's recollections, Land tells us the story of Earl Strong and Texas in the 1930s. Through Earl Strong, we can picture what life was like when Texas Rangers were given the mandate to keep the peace in isolated and lawless towns. Though things haven't changed that much in Caitlin's time, the stories of Sweetwater, Texas in the 1930s tell us much about Texas's history and Caitlin's legacy.
Caitlin Strong is one of my favorite heroines, so I knew that I'd enjoy Strong Justice: A Caitlin Strong Novel. Land also builds on Cort Wesley's personality and history -- he's another hero of sorts who deserves more from the world. The introduction of Earl Strong and the events in the 1930s also give Strong Justice another important story and treat us to a glimpse into the Strong legacy. The book is about the trying to do what is right against desperate odds, just as it is about working to keep the peace and the Texas Rangers but it does this in two time periods and it does so with top notch action and fighting. In Strong Justice, Jon Land gives us heroes to root for and a fun, satisfying, action packed read!
ISBN-10: 0765323362- Hardcover
Publisher: Forge Books; 1 edition (June 22, 2010), 352 pages.
Review copy provided by the author.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable, but not as convincing as some books I've recently read, July 21, 2010
This review is from: Strong Justice: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Hardcover)
This novel could almost be described as a mix between the Old West (the Texas Rangers) and Return of the Jedi (the sequences with the images of the dearly departed).
It is an intriguing concept, but the author doesn't devote enough time to the most important plot of the novel - the idea that the bad guys are trying to take over. Instead, there are far too many sequences where we see the ghost of the heroine's ancestors or other people who are not well defined in the story.
The book is a fast paced ride through Southwest Texas and Juarez, with a some chapters set deeper in Mexico. The heroine (Caitlin Strong) is a typical "good guy", and proves her worth, along with her compadre Cort Wesley Masters, as they battle the bad guys.
All told, I probably would not read this book again - I just didn't enjoy it all that much. I was unexpectedly disappointed; as someone that comes from the Southwest, I've always enjoyed tales of law & order, but this one just didn't work for me. I think that if the author had not had as many scenes of departed, and less jumps between present day and the past, I would have enjoyed it much more.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"relentless page turner of a story" "cooler and darker than NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.", July 12, 2010
This review is from: Strong Justice: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Hardcover)
Caitlin Strong, fifth generation Texas Ranger, first introduced to us in Strong Enough to Die, is back on the trail, this time in pursuit of a serial killer. His name is Macerio, and he is suspected in the Las Mujeres de Juarez atrocities, where over four hundred dismembered and mutilated women were found along the Texas/Mexico border. According to locals, Macerio may also just be the devil personified, with evil powers preventing him from being killed. ' As if this wasn't enough trouble for Strong to deal with, she's also called out to the small town of Albion, where a man is holding hostages inside a convenience store. The man has killed some of the people already, and no one is sure how many--if any--hostages are still alive. '
Strong enters the store through the back, and sees the man with a gun held to the head of a young girl. Not able to get a clear kill without harming the girl, Strong decides to talk to the man, who claims that he had to murder the other people in the store--and his own family, earlier--because they had spiders living and breeding inside them. He had to stop the spiders from spreading and doing the same thing to others. Intuition suddenly kicks in, telling Strong that this bizarre incident is just the tip of an iceberg associated with all the violence that is occurring in the town. More terrifyingly, something beneath the surface has the potential to give America's enemies a new weapon to terrorize the country. '
And just when you've had a chance to catch what little of your breath is left, into this already explosive mix comes Colonel Renaldo Montoya, the commander of Mexico's renegade Zeta Special Forces, plotting a guerrilla war against the U.S. that he believes will launch the 2012 End Times foreseen by the Mayans. '
Strong eventually teams up with no-nonsense tough guy, Cort Wesley Masters, whose wife was murdered in Strong Enough to Die. Strong has had a romantic relationship with Masters, complicating matters further. '
One the many strengths of the book, though, is the conflicting relationship of the two opposite coins: Strong and Masters. The fact that Masters has a criminal past, and Strong has a pure Texas Ranger upbringing only adds fodder for fascinating reading. '
In unsure hands, this relationship would look a clumsy caricature. Instead, it is handled skillfully, making us yearn to believe in its possibility. There's also great tension created by this complication, making Masters and Strong question if they can genuinely re-ignite their relationship, or if violence and guns are the only things that they have in common. '
There is a cinematic beauty to Land's atmospheric writing, placing you right in the middle of all the action. You can smell the flavors of Texas and Mexico, and feel the heat scorching the back of your neck. There is also the acrid reek of gunpowder mingling with the coppery stench of blood and death. Land is to be commended for keeping the plight of the women of Las Mujeres de Juarez in our minds, strengthening our belief that justice will one day prevail for them. '
Caitlin Strong is the most compelling, formidable hero/heroine to grace the pages of any novel in years. Born with the unconquerable combination of the three Bs: Beauty, Brains, and Balls, she is not afraid--when the need occurs--to shoot first and ask questions later. '
Each tense and vivid scene in Strong Justice is succinctly rendered with such powerful prose the reader is left gasping for southern, dusty air. From the very first kick-in-the-teeth, right down to the last bloody bullet fired, the Caitlin Strong series is quickly becoming totally addictive. '
Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men made modern-day westerns cool and dark again. Land has made them cooler and darker with his own brand of grittiness in this relentless page-turner of a story. '
-- NEW YORK JOURNAL
Reviewer Sam Millar's most recent novel is The Dark Place.
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