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Strong Justice: A Caitlin Strong Novel

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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.

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.

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.

If you love a blend of frontier history into the realities of our lives along the Mexican border, as well as drama and thrilling action, you will love Jon Land's most recent adventure of Caitlin Strong. She is a Texas Ranger descended from three generations of Rangers.

On the face of it, our protagonist is determined to put a stop to the cross-border trafficking in innocent young women kidnapped from their homes and sold into sexual slavery. This was an effort of her legendary father as well.

But the story is much deeper. On the emotional front, Caitlin is in a relationship with an infamous former underworld enforcer who has emerged from prison just in time for his wife to be murdered in front of her two sons. Caitlin saves the remainder of that day and the boys. She struggles with commitment in relationship, as her dreams remind her of ambiguity in her own past. This tough Texas Ranger, who can tames all kinds of situations, is needful in her soul. The evolution of Caitlin in this story is a joy read and think about. Even hardened Rangers have emotional trauma buried within their tough hides. Her murderous lover does as well, as he learns how to be a father.

The brown slave business is just one element of what Caitlin has to deal with. There is the resurgence into Texas of a mafia gang kicked into Louisiana as well as a rich Texan trying to corner new sources of water, which he believes will replace oil as the most valuable commodity from the ground. A potentially devastating discovery is made.

South of the border, an army has been assembled by a Mayan descendant who is fed up with perceived second class status and determined to wage war on America to restore the rightful primacy of the Mayans. One of two brothers is a nightmarish murdering machine, laying a trial of the blood of some four hundred young women along his determined boundary between Mexico and the U.S. When devastating bombings spread across the country, Americans will never dare to tread over the line.

Who will save the day? Our hero, on the same streets as her antecedents.

Strong Justice is a wonderfully good read. It is a compelling story that reads like honey dripping on a hot biscuit. I kept saying to myself "Damn this is good!"

As Caitlin moves on her life, I hope that she tackles the immigration problem on the border that is all too real. All of the arrows in her ample quiver will need to be ready to find where to attack this monster.

(Spoilers here) This book is the second in a series that features fifth generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. Most of the characters in this book were introduced in the first of the series, Strong Enough to Die. I'd strongly recommend that you read that book first. I did not and struggled to understand the background and motivation of some of the characters. The story opens with Caitlin Strong investigating murders of Mexican girls on the Texas/Mexico border. A serial killer, Marcielo is the target of her investigation. Caitlin saves a kidnapped Mexican girl, Maria Lopez from the serial killer. Subplots abound! A billionaire, Hollis Tyree is drilling for water and finding something completely different. People living near the drilling site are acting strangely and committing violent acts. Strong is accompanied by Cort Wesley, an ex-convict and Special Forces veteran who is also her love interest. A shadowy character, Paz, lurks in the background playing the part of Caitlin's protecting angel. Colonel Montoya, a Mayan rebel plans terrorist attacks on the United States. If all of this wasn't complicated enough we are given flashbacks scenes from Caitlin's Texas Ranger grandfather and great grandfather, including a description of the Texas Rangers versus the Al Capone gangsters in the 1930s. The good guys prevail as Caitlin, Cort and Paz thwart all of the bad guys in their attempts to terrorize citizens in the US and Mexico; the body counts are really very overwhelming.

This was one of the most complicated police procedurals that I've ever read, but the author just pulls it off in my opinion. Several things that I enjoyed about this book were: 1) Caitlin Strong is a smart Old West type police officer and a great character with depth and passion 2) all of the Texas Ranger history was fun to read and enhanced the story 3) the multi-generational story was a plus even though it added to the complexity of an already complex story. Some of the things I though could stand improvement were: 1) without reading the first book I was clueless about why a Texas Ranger would take up with an ex convict and also what the motivation was for Paz to become Caitlin's protector 2) too many sub plots, I left out many of them in my review 3) too much gratuitous violence. All said though if you like police procedurals with a slightly historical twist this might be for you.

Caitlin Strong once again returns as the hero of this novel. She is joined and aided by her partner Cort Wesley Masters an ex Green Beret. Masters son rescues a young girl from a ring called Las Mujers. This is a very dangerous group with criminal ties in Mexico. These young girls are sold into prostitution in the United States. Also involved is a serial killer named Marcerio. He is leaving a trail of bodies in the State of Texas.
Hollis Tyree III is a wealthy man who is mining water for future use. He has also discovered something else underground that could prove to be very dangerous to the United States. Caitlin also learns about her grandfather who had been brought into Sweetwater, Texas to clean up the town. The grandfather, Ranger Earl Syrong also did battle with the forces of Al Capone. Caitlin also learns a deep dark family secret about who she really is. Add to the mix Colonel Renaldo Montoya the head of the elite Zetas a military force. He intends to launch to launch a guerilla war against the United States. Colonel Guillermo Paz of Venezuala arrives on the scene to help stop the forces of evil. This is a page turner of a book. Do not miss it.

Fifth-generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong is back on a mission to see justice done for Las Mujeres de Juarez, over four hundred dismembered and mutilated women found murdered along the border between Texas and Mexico, in Jon Land's suspenseful thought-provoking mystery thriller, Strong Justice. In the first book featuring Ranger Caitlin Strong, Strong Enough to Die,Jon Land took a close look at government-sanctioned torture and the degradation of civil rights. Besides the action-filled, tense, page-turning plot of Strong Justice, in which Caitlin also has to go head-to-head with Colonel Montoya, a terrorist determined to bring America to her knees, I like that Jon Land incorporates the news headlines into his novels, like the often ugly and brutal reality of the cruel fates that Mexican women forced into prostitution sometimes face, of young lives cut short way too early and nastily. Strong Justice is that rare type of book that will live with you long after you have finished reading it, and it's one that both those who love the Western and Mystery genres should heartily embrace.

She teams up in San Antonio with Cort Wesley Masters again, whose wife was murdered in Strong Enough to Die. Caitlin has had a romantic relationship with Cort, despite his criminal past, because he wants to become a better father for his two boys. There's a tension created by this complication, also, both wondering if they can reignite their relationship, or if violence and guns are the only things that they had in common and that brought them together. They head to the town of Nuevo Laredo to try to find the evil, bald-headed steroid freak Marcerio, whom some call El Demono, a man it's rumored cannot be killed. Besides being involved with a sex slavery ring, he also might be "the worst serial killer in history," the person who murdered the Women of Juarez. Maria Lopez, a young woman who'd been forced into prostitution by Marcerio and his men - and whom he will do anything to get back - draws Caitlin Strong a crude map in black marker to Nuevo Laredo and the house she and other women were held at, one with "birds on it big enough to house a lot of people."

Cort's older son, fifteen-year-old Dylan Torres, had meet Maria on a day he skipped school. She told him her story, and that Marcerio was still after her. They are spotted by the police, and run for it, but the police catch Dylan and hold him on suspicion of possessing drugs, even though they find none on him. They reason, erroneously, why should he have ran, if drugs weren't involved. He uses his one phone call to phone Ranger Strong, and she has him released into her recognizance. .

At the time, Cort is in New Orleans, trying to get money he's owed from Frank Branca, Junior. Cort had done some jobs for Frank Branca, Sr., who'd suffered a stroke and now was wheel chair bound, and Junior doesn't want to pay Cort what he's owed. He finally takes it from Junior's wallet, after saving him in a bloody shoot-out by killing members of a rival gang with Frank Branca, Sr.'s pistols. He believes he needs the money to help prove to social workers, who seem bent on taking his boys away from him, that he can provide for them economically. He and Caitlin have to demonstrate that he is a good father to Dylan and his younger son, Luke, or the social worker in charge of his case will recommend that the boys be placed in foster care.

As if this wasn't enough for Texas Ranger 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. He's killed some of the people already, and no one is sure how many are still alive. Caitlin enters the store through the back, and sees the man with a gun held to the head of a young girl. She can't get a good shot at him without putting the girl's life in jeopardy, so she talks to the man, who claims that he had to kill the other people in the store - and his own family, earlier - because they had spiders living and breeding inside them, and he had to stop the spiders from spreading and doing the same thing to others. He asks Caitlin if she can see the spiders all over the shop, on the walls, in their webs, dangling from the ceiling. She goes along with him, and humors him, and rescues the girl, but something tells her that this incident is just the tip of the iceberg of the weird accounts of violence that are occurring in the town of eight thousand.

Billionaire Hollis Tyree has been drilling wells on land he owns in Tunga County, and a whole town has sprung up to satisfy the needs of the men working for him, complete with stores, a doctor, a church, and prostitutes, some of them the same women that came from the house with birds painted on it that Maria mentions to Ranger Strong. His own children disappeared two years previously on a trip to Mexico, and despite his willingness to have paid any ransom anyone responsible might have demanded, no one does demand a ransom, and he now thinks his kids have likely been murdered there. He's not been drilling for oil, but for water, because he realizes that water in Texas, California, and other Western states is becoming more scarce, and he doesn't want to see the results to America's prosperity and way of life if water there suddenly ran out. However, there's something besides water in the wells he's having dug, something dangerous that's getting into Albion's water supply, twenty miles away.....

Strong Justice is one of the best books I've read this year. Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong's attempts to bring justice to the more than four hundred women raped and murdered along the El Paso/Juarez border is torn from today's headlines. I'd heard of the Women of Juarez before, and hoped that whomever was responsible for their deaths would some day be caught, and I still hope that one day, that will happen. The story about their plight and the fictional Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong trying to find the man who killed them made for fascinating reading that kept me awake late into the night to read more. It's a haunting novel, one that combines scenes from the past, 1931, and the events of Caitlin's grandfather, Texas Ranger Earl Strong's, fighting to keep Al Capone's gang out of Sweetwater, Texas, with Caitlin's struggles to put a stop to a terrible serial killer and terrorists. If you like either Westerns, Thrillers, or both, you owe it to yourselves to pick up a copy of Strong Justice today!

See book summaries above.
You've just got to love these thrillers that feature fifth-generation Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong. Strong, along with two of her co-horts, Cort and Paz, makes this a very riveting thriller. With the intricate plotting and the suspenseful action readers will come away from this totally satisfied. Jon Land just keeps getting stronger with each novel.

Part of the book just read like a "Family Tree(History)" or ancestry racial DNA proof. Also, too many past histories inserts that almost blocked the smooth flow of "the present". This is the 1st "Srong" series sequel, but 'THE PAST' never ended, so many and so annoyingly blah, blah and blah unavoidable. I would prefer that the author gives us more storyline, happenstances, plots and scenarios focus at the PRESENT time instead of the "PAST"; better bury the past deep under and show more 'The Present" on the ground level. Also, the 7-feet 'Giant' character and the bad chemo guy just read like two characters from a comic book; do we need such phantom-like figures that made this series more unrealistic and unconvincing? Please stop providing us with less Strong's family history, just give us more present tough situations and show us how she deal with them with extreme prejudice and smartness.

A great central character, but do the plots need to involve armies of bad guys? And our ranger seems to cover a lot of mileage. Don't they have help and radios. I like the character a lot, the stories need work.